was sitting in my room and minding my own business when i heard a sound. or sounds.
sounded like guns being fired in rapid succession.
then i looked out of my window.
and there were fireworks!
nice nice.
no idea why ppl fire fireworks on halloween, but they were pretty :)


fireworks partially obsured by the opposite block.

was invited to a sleepover on saturday night.
a fellow 2nd year from robinson.
it was a nice girly sleepover, so we all brought sleeping bags/ duvets to one girls room and pigged out on ice cream/ cookies/ coke/ crisps and watched a girly film- Mean Girls.
haha.

apparently the guy living across the corridor felt threatened. so he got a bunch of guys over to watch saw 3- a manly film, according to the other girls.
it was the first time i spent such an extended period of time with the brits.
the longest i've spent with the girls in my college is like 3 hours- in the exam hall.
it was an interesting experience.
felt quite out of place sometimes when they talked about certain books/ tv shows/ school experiences that were quite foreign to me. but it was an eye opener, so no worries.
and then the conversation drifted to religion somehow.
it was a rather non-threathening environment, so it was all good.
there were 2 Christians, 1 Catholic, 1 Jew and 2 of them were undecided.

after the film, some of the girls decided to give the guy across the corridor a make over. so they barged into his room and some of the guys held him down while the girls attempted to put lipstick on him. didn't really succeed. so the girls left.
...
then the girls had a round of arm wrestling before settling down to chat.
the jewish girl explained the holy jewish texts.
i discovered that they study the entire Old Testament, only that the order of the books is slightly different. but of course the order is not impt.
and the Scottish girl told us abt the diff types of scottish dance.
and my fren hannah marshall told me that david marshall, the first PM of s'pore, is her grand uncle. cool haha.
and then we fell asleep at abt 3 am.

all of us!
arm wrestling; pigging out; comparing our arms; trying to give Iain a makeover.

Olga, Tania and me! 3 robinson bio nat scis :)

olga and i had church in the morning so we woke up at 830 am and went back to our rooms.
i was so tired i went back to sleep.
and woke up at 11 am.
and then i realised that service at Eden Baptist started at 10 am.
yikes.
so i went to St Andrew the Great (anglican) instead- they start at 1115 am :)

somehow i felt that God was leading me to StAG that day.
cos i the sermon was very good- i really felt God speaking to me through it. it was a timely reminder of the meaning of humility as shown by Christ.
and they had a student lunch after the service, which was followed by a talk entitled "science and God: friend or foe?" the speaker was a prof from the Geology dept and talked abt creation as described in Genesis.
if i didn't go to StAG that day i wouldn't have gone for the talk cos i wouldn't have known about it. so i guess God really wanted me to be there that day, and He planned it all out for me nicely.

amazing stuff.

the line between biochem and cdb is fuzzier than ever.
in fact some things are taught in both lectures.
but no matter- they are still as confusing.

is it possible to go mad from an overdose of info on DNA?

i learn about DNA 6 days a week during lect.
and on the last day i either write and essay on it or read some related stuff.

and i'm not really comprehending what i'm learning (or rather, reading) either.
eukaryotic DNA is madness.
prokaryotic is looking up with david summers as the lecturer for cdb, but the stoopid supercoiling business is still as elusive as ever. to me, that is.

and i don't really care abt dna.
i'm learning more about it than i'll ever care to know about.
i wanna learn about proteins!!
when can we learn about proteins.
boo.

pathology is looking up.
at last.
now its my facvsubject.
i know why.
its cos we are learning abt the adaptive immune system which is way more fun than the innate immune system, which is a huge pain.
eek.



so much for that.
on the salsa side...
i don't feel like i'm improving.
i've hit a plateau.
actually i hit it some time ago, only that i had hoped that coming to uk would kick me out of it.
it has, a bit.
but not enough.
and i don't have enough time to practice.
twice a week is sapping too much energy from me.
fullofexcuses.
and i still have time to blog.

...also known as Oxford.
went there yesterday cos the Oxbridge games were held there this year.
so i took the bus there with the rest of the camb ppl, and toured the place instead of participating in the games.
simply cos i'm rubbish at all sports expect maybe dancesport.
so there we go.
walked around the city with a tour guide- zhuang, who kindly impressed us (yiling and i) with his knowledge of the place.
he left at 4 pm for football, and we were joined by tianyi instead.
had dinner at the opium cafe, a chinese restuarant that wasn't that fantastic.
jing ling (in camb!) is better :)
left at 730 pm and arrived in camb at 1045 pm.

photos!
can't match the names of the colleges to the photos.
hope there aren't mistakes.

photos in chronological order.
collages labelled clockwise starting from top left.


first stop: Christ Church College. home of harry potter!


me and yiling in the courtyard that was once a roman bath.


zhuang and i

at the foot of the stairs leading to the famous dining hall. the same flight of steps that harry potter descended in one of the movies.

dining hall; ceiling of dining hall; interior of the college cathedral.

one of the many entrances to the college

me and zhuang on the oldest cobble-stoned road in oxford.

merton college. apparently where Tolkien got his inspiration for the fellowship of the ring. i think.

magdelen college; me by some random old wall; telephone booth peeking out of a corner; cannotrememberwatcollege.

ivy-covered walls.

oxford version of the Bridge of Sighs. cambridge version prettier :)

in the famous Bodleian library. entrance to the "school of natural sciences"
random post-grad; 2 nice buildings; me in front of all soul's college.

policemen on horses.

horsie!
the policemen were there cos there was a demonstration by animal rights activists. their cry: "stop the oxford animal lab". strange name for a lab, really.

me and tianyi at the entrance to the covered market.

me, tianyi, yiling in front of oxford castle; ben's cookies! v nice cookie shop; row of houses.

in conclusion
oxford is much larger than cambridge.
its a city. camb is a village trying to be a town.
oxford has lots of tall spires, so it boasts an impressive skyline.
the buildings in oxford are generally taller- 3 stories as compared to 2 stories in camb.
therefore camb is cosier and warmer.
and more quaint and prettier :)
plus the river Cam runs through the town and its so beautiful. the river in oxford doesn't run through the colleges.

well well.
so i've finally gotten a chance to tour the Other university.
after driving through it twice and competing there once.
thanks again to zhuang who took the afternoon off to show us around and take photos of us. who also refused to be in photos cos he didn't want to look touristy :p

finally.
i can breathe again.
this week has been insane.
5 pieces of work due this week.
did one over the week end, so 4 to do by friday.

had cf on monday night.
on tuesday sch ended at 4pm, but i had a formal that night which meant that the whole night was gone.

wed was a nightmare.

ppl in s'pore ask: so wat's it like studying in cam? lets see.

10-11 am: biochem lect (learnt abt chromatin structure. like CDB all over again.)
11-12 noon: get to chem dept for pathology lect. eat lunch and read path notes. drank 1 cup of coffee.
12-1 pm: path lecture. learnt abt antibodies. good, calm, clear lecturer. learnt a lot from the lecture. at last pathology is looking up.
1-2 pm: read CDB notes in preparation for essay writing. drank another cup of coffee.
2-4 pm: pathology practical. looked down the microscope for 2 hours. apparently 2 hours is the maximum period of time one can look down the microscope continously and safely. so obviously we have test our limits. the demonstrator was really patient and nice. now i can recognise granulation tissue and identify acute and chronic inflammation, amongst other things.
4-5 pm: rushed to the biochem dept again. realised i was starving and my brain was dead. noticed this guy walking to some corner and emerging with a chocolate bar. so i went to that corner and discovered a vending machine. bought some energy bar thing. attempted to read biochem notes while waiting for supervision. failed miserably and decided to stone instead.
5-6 pm: biochem supervision. got my essay back. i wrote 2.5 pages and got a 2(i). the supervision mate beside me wrote 1 page and got a 2(i). wattheheck. was a bit miffed cos i put in a lot of effort for that essay. oh well. got positive comments for the essay and some helpful suggestions, so thats good. tried to make helpful and intellegent comments during the supervision but didn't quite succeed cos my brain was so fried.
6-7:30 pm: headed back to my room, got takeway from the cafeteria in my college. ate dinner in front of the computer and checked email. tried to write essay. didn't succeed.
7:30-10 pm: salsa team practice at wolfson college. learnt a new routine.
10-11:30 pm: salsa social at wolfson. the team stomped into the college bar where the social was held and took over the floor. danced with the team choreographer a few times :) he is this incredibly, unbelievably, beautiful guy all the girls on the team are in love with. only that he is married. and he is still doing his phd. oh well. too bad.
11:30- 2 am: went back to my room, showered, read CDB notes in order to write essay. didn't write essay, went to bed.


thursday was comparable.

first lecture at 10 am
ended sch at 7 pm.
then went for salsa social from 9-1130 pm.
finally wrote the short 1 page essay for CDB then went to bed.

friday was a bit better.
ended sch an hour earlier (ie at 4 pm) cos CDB prac was shortend. yay.
managed to finish the other 2 pieces of supervision work due today.
went to sains to buy food, then went back to cook dinner for my cg. all 11 of us.
after dinner 4 more ppl came and somehow all managed to sqeeze into my room. record number, that.

and now they've all gone home and i'm taking a break.
this week has been mad.
bleh.
hopefully next week will be less hectic.

went for the cumsa freshers formal today.
prembroke college.
nice hall- high ceiling with intricately carved details.
we ate by candlelight, but there were electric lights as well, so it was bright enough.
good food- 4 courses plus coffee.

waiting outside the hall for everyone to arrive.
took photos while waiting!

yvonne, hx, tianyi, me.

jeremy, me, kh. my new musicians! note my new amarni exhange jacket :)

in formal hall...

me, kenny, tianti.

i pennyed ian, and someone pennyed lucas. poor freshers- they had to eat their dessert without using their hands! :)

me and darryl, yijin, hx, ben.

got pennyed in my wine a few times.
a bit high now.
going to bed.
goodnight.

does God answer prayers?

today i've seen that He does.

at the end of last term, the new cf committee (of which i am a part) was very worried.
the seniors were leaving.
the seniors were a very musically talented bunch of ppl.
like ls, daniel and ben. especially ben ben! who can play the piano and guitar without looking at chords.
and there weren't many ppl to take their place!
so we knew we were going to face a severe shortage of pianists and guitarists to play music for worship during cf.
and so we prayed for musically-inclined freshers.

today, i went for cf and sat beside this guy, kh, during dinner.
i decided to ask him if he played the piano.
and apparently he did!
and the guitar as well.
so i immediately asked him to play the piano for me when i lead worship.
and then we were talking and talking and i happened to look away.
this fresher entered my field of vision, and he looked a bit lost, so i decided to call out to him.
"jeremy!"
and he turned around.
"do you play the guitar?" (i had no idea why i said guitar instead of piano or someother instrument)
and he was like "yes"
i was like "AHH! come over here!"
so the both of them agreed to play music when i lead worship in a few weeks.

after the short sermon/talk, we had dessert, then someone started playing on the piano and the 2 freshers picked up the guitar and started strumming along.
i was like wattheheck.
so i asked kh to play the piano and jeremy to play the guitar.
i mentioned sometime before that i would like to lead the song "As the deer"
and somehow they remembered that and started to play the song- just like that.
then we tried out a few other songs we had the chords for and they played together beautifully.
i was so happy!
yay :)

then hx informed me that there is this other junior lucas who can play the guitar and the piano after listening to a tune once.
so i sang "There is a higher throne" and he played it on the piano at once although he didn't know the song.
i was amazed.

and so does God answer prayers?

i've seen that He does :)

at last.
one more essay down.
and 3 more to go.
2 short ans and 1 long one.

no more path essay! :)
just had path sup and he didn't mention anything abt a new essay.
hope there wouldn't be one in the email.
:S

was writing my path essay just now, when i thought of a new salsa shine.
not exactly a ground shattering shine move, but a new one i haven't done before nonetheless.
maybe i should write more path essays.
then i'll get more inspiration.

nah.

one essay down, 4 more to go.
ARGH.

this is madness.

currently my fav subject is biochem.
and i enjoy biochem and CDB practicals cos they are fun.
sort of.
biochem pracs are a pain cos the gilson pipettes they give us are terrible.
other than that they are quite fun.
i feel intellectually stimulated during practicals.
in the LT i just feel lost.
unless its biochem lect, in which case i enjoy the lect.

pathology is jia lat.
the notes are alright, but the lecturer is boring.
and she assumes we know a lot, when i don't.
so i'm quite lost during lect.
practicals now still consist of histology.
spent 2 hours looking at lung tissue through a microscope.
bleh.
fortunately is the good microscope with 2 eye pieces. so not too bad.
but still quite boring.
its not that demanding though, so i guess thats a good thing.



one day my ang moh supervision mates and i were queuing up to enter the senate house to register for practicals.
ang moh: this is rubbish! the queue isn't moving at all.
me: (without thinking) yah. damn sian ah.
don't think she heard me though. pity :)

randomness...

i've mentioned the name "linus pauling" to a few undergrad/post-grad scientists (and indeed we should be called scientists since the med sch ppl are medics and the law sch ppl are lawyers. but i digress.)
and all of them think he is the guy who came up with the exclusion principle.
the one abt each orbital being able to take only 2 electrons with opposite spins.
well he didn't.
its the Pauli Exclusion Principle not Pauling.

i must confess i made the same mistake.
so i went and consulted wiki and the famous chem textbook "why chemical rxns happen"
and realised that Pauling is the guy who characterised chemical bonds- and won a nobel prize for it.
he conceptualised orbital hybridisation and electronegativity, amongst a zillion other things.
basically the source of all that grieve in chem lect for most part of michaelmas last year.
anw.
i've realised why his name is so familiar.
the Pauling Scale of electronegativity!

no wonder.
haha.

i'm procrastinating.
working on the 5 essays that are due at various points next week.
or attempting to.
bah.

just read something that touched my heart :)
i was faced with a dilema on monday afternoon.
i was stressed, i didn't know what to choose, i was worried.
and then one of my bestest friends in the world appeared online.
and i asked her for help.
since msn is impersonal, i rang her though it was like midnight in s'pore.
and she listened to me whine and stress about that rather trival problem before patiently giving me advice.
the problem was trival, but the fact that she bothered to analyse it with me and give me her opinion really touched me.
thanks babe :)

then that evening another bestest fren came online so i repeated the story to her. and even though she had limited time online, she gave me her advice and offered to pray for me.
thanks dear :)

yes.
i do thank God for them.
and to my last bestest friend, i will keep u in my prayers and i will will call u soon!


US!

so school has started.
the good thing abt my time table is that i have no more 9 am lects!
yay :)
so 10 am lects everyday, including sat.
good news: only one lect on sat.
bad news: practicals everyday from tues to fri.

so far my subjects have been alright.
my fav is biochem!
thanks to my attachment in the lab, i know whats going on in both lect and prac- more like a revision than anything.
plus i had to do mini-preps in the lab in a.*, set up restriction digests and run agarose gels.
which is exactly what we did for our first biochem prac!
albiet with slightly different protocols.
and its only like one mini-prep.
shared btw me and tianyi- she did like 40 at once before. my maximum is 20 at one go.
so one miniprep between the both of us was quite.. sad.
but its nice working with tianyi. yay! :)

cell developmental biology is alright only.
the first prac was interesting- did RNA extraction, which i have never done before. v similar to DNA extraction though.
we had to load an SDS gel to run protein samples.
the set-up in the lab here is slightly different from the one in the biopolis lab, but the concept is obviously the same.
since i loaded gels (almost) every other day back in s'pore, loading the gels wasn't a problem.
the demonstrator supervising the gel loading was like "this is the best gel loading i've seen all day"
so all the practice in summer did pay off :)

don't really enjoy the CDB lects though. always feel so sleepy. and the content isn't that interesting. like the diff types of polymerases.
biochem much better- a lot of techniques involved, like the diff types of PCR. so much better.

pathology is...
interesting.
the first lect was by this guy who discovered and named apoptosis.
he said "i've been told i pronounce 'apoptosis' wrongly"
that was quite amusing.
forgot his name though.
took a photo of him for fun:

he just skimmed through the pages on apoptosis though, so i'm a quite lost.
didn't enjoy that first lect.
the second lect was by some lady.
very organised and went at a good pace.
but the content was just so.. touch and go.
covered breadth but only went in depth occasionally.
so not v nice.




was cycling home one day when i realised that the sun was shining in a manner that made the buildings quite nice.
so i took some photos.
cycle through these places everyday:

saw this in my shared balcony one day. i share it with a person in the adjacent staircase. no idea who that person is. but definitely a brit.

i really thank God for my room mate.
or rather, person-i-share-a-bathroom-and-toilet-with, semi-en suite mate.
she is friendly, so we chat quite a bit, but she isn't overly friendly so we don't just plonk ourselves in each others rooms and waste time.
respectful distance.
plus she doesn't blast music or have loud noisy friends who go to her room and chat till 2 am.
unlike my room mate last year.
so she is quite the ideal room mate.
yay.

i'm back on the salsa team this year.
we all have to re-audition, so i'm thankful i'm back in.
auditions were on sat morning, and i was rather stressed fri night.
so my whole CG prayed for me.
i do love my CG :)

busy day!
met my cells supervisor in the morning.
an african american lady with mutiple piercings on each ear. when we met her she had huge sunglasses on, paired with a black leather jacket. and she was smoking.
and then she told us that she was a post-doc in the lab here and would be moving to harvard to start her own lab next year. wowee~

then we went to the Senate House to register for our practicals.
had to queue for quite some time to get in.
the senate house is where we'll graduate, so we were quite excited to see its interior.
decided to take photos while waiting!

some of the robinson bio nat scis outside the senate house. there were 2 old men with top hats guarding the enterance. strange.

then i went back to the freshers fair to help out at the CCCF booth and the salsa team booth.

balloons marking the stall of the Jewish Society; CF booth; back view of the new CF t-shirts i designed. yay :)

cooked dinner for my cumsa children at night.
tiring business.
quite rusty cos i haven't cooked for like 4 months.
:S
still it was quite fun :)

v tired now.
and its only 9:40 pm.
lectures start tmr!
boo :(

i'm safely back in cam.
yay.
landed yesterday morning (uk time), got to my new room and shifted everything back from the trunk room to my room by noon.
with kumbang's help of course- thanks! :)

then spent most of the afternoon unpacking.
felt very sorry for myself when i was all alone in my room.
missed my family very much.
so cycled to town and bought a sim card and called my mummy.
yay :)
then i felt much better.
went to sains, where i met a bunch of s'poreans. apparently there were only a few s'poreans there initially but the group just grew bigger cos more and more ppl came by :)
so it was nice seeing everyone again.


Green street- beside sains.

had CF prayer and praise at night, and that was even better cos i got to meet all the cf ppl!
but there was a distinct difference without all the seniors there- ben, ls, daniel, david.
miss them quite a bit.
guess we'll have to get used to that.
can't imagine what it'll be like next year with even more of the seniors gone :(



fresher's fair today.
helped out at the salsa team booth and practiced my accent while promoting salsa.
met even more s'poreans at the cumsa booth so that was nice.
helped out at the robinson CU international students dinner so i got to meet some freshers from all over the world, even this guy from iran. that was cool.




my room mate this year is a chinese girl.
she is not really my room mate cos we don't share a room, but we share a bathroom and a toilet that only the both of us have access to cos we have keys to the main door.
anw.
so she is a 3rd year from china who did her 2nd year in MIT on an exchange.
so she is really smart.
i've only known her for abt a day, but she seems quite nice, so thats good.


my room this year is slightly bigger than my 1st year room cos i have a smaller balcony now.
this means that i have a rectangular space in the middle of my room, large enough to accomodate 4 sleeping bags side by side quite comfortably.
thats the good part abt my room.
plus is right opposite the plodge, library and laundry room- very convenient.
the bad bit is the bathroom- the showerhead is mad. water sprays in all directions. how to shower like that :(
and my bed is rather strange. is kind of lumpy. think there are broken springs.
no backache today though, so i guess thats alright.
but the worst part of it is my desk- its abt half a metre shorter than my old one :( so the drawers are smaller too.
however the good part is that the desk is lower! so my feet can touch the ground when i'm sitting on the (lower) chair. yay :)
overall i'm quite pleased with this room.

plus its quite clear that God prepared this room for me.
i was right at the bottom of the ballot last year, and this was the one and only room left in college by the time it was my turn to choose a room.
so i was so, so grateful.
i still am.
it feels very comforting to know that i'm in a room chosen for me by God.


view from my room! can see my old room from here :)




its nice being a 2nd year, cos i know exactly what do expect and what to do, so its easier to adapt.
but its a bit lonlier at first cos there aren't any orientation events to go for, which made me so busy in my first year i forget to be homesick.
that said, now is a good opportunity to meet up with my brit supervision mates and really get to know them better.
plus i can recognise a lot more ppl in college now, so i can talk to them more comfortably.

cam is still the same.
as beautiful as ever.
the air here is fantastic too- cool, fresh and crisp.
most of the time.
as i cycled around i felt as if i haven't really left at all.
i can still remember how to get to places, and how all the streets look.
somewhat like how i felt when i went back to s'pore.
but not quite- cos i haven't been away for as long, and cos i don't have the same sense of belonging i have to s'pore.

i'll be going back home in december.
YAY.
looking forward to that a lot :)
almost don't feel like unpacking my lugguage properly cos i'll be packing up again soon :)



my beautiful beautiful pink and purple bike. yay :) parked outside sains.