Okay.

Its time to move.

I'm relocating to chocolatechipcookie3.blogspot.com. There's nothing there yet - its a brand new space.

Reserved that spot some time ago because I had a feeling it was coming and I can't see myself continuing this blog space if and when it did.

And so it happened.

It was lovely while it lasted.


Time to pick up the pieces and move on.

Microb pick up lines!

I so love facebook!

1. Wanna come to the lab and check out my ball and stick model?
2. Hey baby... why don't you get your ligase working on my okazaki fragment and lengthen my strand
3. Chemists do it on the table, periodically...
4. You're so attractive, you could strip the electrons from a fluorine atom!
5. Baby, I wish you and I could be part of some facilitated diffusion because I'd love to go in your channel!
6. Your clothes are a carbonyl group, shall we reduce them?
7. Some dates have called me a promotor. Others have referred to me as a real operator. Personally, I think I'm just a cute piece of DNA who is still looking for that special transcription factor to help me unwind.
8. Hey babe - wanna strip and probe some membranes?
9. Let my ligand bind your G protein... I swear, you'll experience a cascade of reactions.
10. So what if my substrate isn't specific to your active site? Word in the cytoplasm has it that you're quite a promiscuous enzyme.
11. Are you dividing? Because you have a very nice cleavage furrow.
12. Do you want to extract some protein from my column?
13. You must be a lac operon because you definitely just turned me on.
14. If I were a detergent and you were a cell, I'd be Triton X-20 so I can disrupt your membrane.
15. Let's make like DNA...you go 5' to 3', I'll go 3' to 5'.

Reflections for 2007 (incomplete)

In general, 2007 has been a better year than 2006. (Note the use of in general)

A year ago, these were my resolutions:

1. Crack an egg without adding loads of teeny egg shells to whatever I'm cooking/eating.
2. CAP 4.5
3. Not forget that I'm supposed to go for driving lessons/test.
4. Travel.

Okay. I accomplished 1, 3 and 4. 2 seems to be completely out of my reach now.(In fact, even if I score nothing but As for the rest of my undergrad years I don't think I'd achieve it.) 3 was accomplished in a twisted way I guess - I canceled driving altogether, so I couldn't possibly forget to go for lessons or test.

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

This year, my public aims are (even if they're a bit late):

1. CAP go north.
2. Look less threatening (I don't know HOW I'm going to do this).
3. Complete O level physics by June, half of A level by 2008 (I'm starting to think that taking the mcat in 2009 isn't going to work out)
4. Work.
5. (Where possible) Travel once. Free and Easy.

-----------

2007 was interesting.


Academia
My CAP nosedived thanks to german2, and I'm still suffering from the aftereffects of it. 4.5 is a far off dream now. Besides that, I am more adjusted to studying life sciences. The medical dream lurks, but for obvious reasons I am not harping over it any longer. I wish I came to my senses earlier, as well as planned my modules properly, but truth be told I couldn't have afforded it anyway, so that's that. At this point I'm thinking that a psychology minor is a good idea, but let's wait for me to successfully bid for pl1101e and see how I fare in it.

The other big thing is - I dropped german. I didn't see that one coming, to be honest. I thought I'd stick to it alllll the way and be fluent in german and then.. what? Work in germany next time? Best part is - I made a complete about-turn, and started on FRENCH. At Alliance Francaise. I still don't know if what I did was completely stupid given the fact that I am now sep-less. On one hand I really want to go on SEP. On the other hand, after spending 1 month in germany on immersion, I know I don't want to go back there to study. So...?

Probably the dumbest thing I did was to take lsm2201 - experimental biochemistry. The idea was to see an improvement to my knowledge of biochem. That worked out. What made it a dumb thing, was that I scored a B in the end for this 6mc module, which messed up my grades. And pc1326 - physics in life sciences. What a waste of my time, and bad grade to boot. I thought it would help in my understanding of physics - NOT. gek2500 is also a waste of time, but I did get a decent grade for it, so I shall cease complaining. I enjoyed ssa2209 more than I expected, got a bit irritated during the lectures because the lecturer was forever singing pap's praises, then got irritated during the tutorials because nearly everyone else was bashing up the pap. Balance, people!

What else was good about this year, academically? OH. I did the human anatomy module - it was great fun! Especially the lab sessions! Once you got over the smell of formaldehyde/formalin/whatever, that is. It was really cool to see and touch organs and identify them. What's sad, is the fact that these cadavers were drying up and falling to bits. And that they are all unclaimed bodies from years ago. Few people ever donate their bodies to science in Singapore - I don't think I will, either. Organ donation is fine - if mine are still in relatively good condition at point of death. I prefer being fertilizer. Hmm. Getting morbid, I am.

Research: I am starting to think that it isn't such a bad idea after all, in fact, I might consider doing a masters or something in future if I can't get into medical school. But not here, definitely - US or Canada would be nice. But I'd need some sort of scholarship for that. That's for another day, another time, though. But the gist of it is, I realise I like solving problems. A lot. Now to work on the asking questions part.


CO
I started attending practice more regularly after 2007 kicked in because concert wasn't that far away after all. It was quite interesting, because I've never played a concerto (as orchestra accompaniment - duh.) The uniform is a horror - I've said it before, and I'd say it again: never did I think that I'd be wearing this kind of monstrosity at university level. After that, against all logic (and my previous resolve), I ran for exco, and got in. I am still deciding whether I regret it, due to certain issues.

Disappeared quite soon after exams ended though, and reappeared in time to be the only representative from co at the cfa retreat thingy. Actually I do have a lot of things I want to say about it but never got round to due to circumstances then, so here goes: It was painful, helpful and not so helpful.

Painful because I was the only representative from co and I seriously didn't know what to do, what to say. When I saw charmaine I was soooo happy! And lileng! They came with other people from their groups, so I couldn't like urm, exactly stick with them, but at least familiar faces! And everyone seems like they knew everyone else - except me! Plus this sounds bimbotic, but I had a disaster haircut and was feeling really down and unlike myself and generally not in a mood to be friendly to people when I didn't even feel like myself. So was mostly a wallflower during lunchtimes and such. And the lanyard thingy was in BRIGHT PINK. And my group was PINK too. There's only so much pink I can take before I feel like stabbing something. And there wasn't anyone familiar in my group. I wanted to die at some activities - most memorable was find an artifact and come up with a performance idea in your groups like WTH SERIOUSLY?! Not that I should grumble too much because my group had xinkai who just came up with all kinds of stuff on the spot and the rest of us just sat there and snickered at the amount of smoke that was shrouding our presentation. Smoke is good - we won that game. Oh - some dance session was also a pain in the ass. charmaine and I didn't feel like dancing so we snuck all the way to the back of the room where we still tried to follow the session but at least we were freer to trade dumb comments and fewer people could see that we were really bad at it. Until we had to pair up with someone from the opposite sex. (insert censored comment here) I think the only dancing I vaguely like so far are the hc mass dances.

Helpful because at the end of 2 days I knew more people in cfa and so time spent there during the semester was not so awkward: more people to say hi and bye to. Even if I don't remember the names of half the people I greet. And because I knew more about cfa and the other groups. And also because the dinner thingy at fort canning at the end was good: especially the food. My table was discussing cca point allocation while the other tables were talking rubbish. I was trying to keep up with my limited knowledge and brain still on holiday but at least I learnt something, so it was good.

Not so helpful because I really couldn't see how I could apply stuff like fashion and poise and how to dance (-beep-) and whatever else to the management of the orchestra. And talks: music appreciation - okay that was useful I guess, although of it was nothing compared to what I had to know for o level music. Industry wasn't so helpful; maybe its just me, because for me co is like an interest, a safety valve for my everyday sanity, and I am most certainly not contemplating a career in the arts, whether management or otherwise. So I was quite bored during that part.

Might have enjoyed myself more if I wasn't so worried over hs and his stupid collapsed lung. And I was painfully reminded of our walks from orchard to city hall and esplanade and beyond (which I haven't had the heart to do alone since 2006) because upon finding out that I was headed to city hall to (try to) get tickets for the corrinne may concert, I became the tour guide to the 3 non-local guitar guys who didn't want to lose their way to the esplanade. I was like "be prepared to get lost, because I haven't walked there for more than half a year", and then mentally, "sighhhhhh."

Speaking of which, where are all the photos from the retreat? I haven't seen them anywhere, besides a few on facebook courtesy of chen tao.

Next came matric fair, which I still think in general was quite a waste of time because the people who sign up, come for welcome tea and eventually join us as members are NEARLY COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANYWAY. Welcome tea... I can't remember much of it now, except that I was exhibiting pathological behaviour. Which I can't seem to correct. Semester passed in a blur of bad attendance and mistakes which I shall not mention here.

CO camp! Ah. I'm not a camp kind of person, so I won't deny that I was quite stressed over the entire thing, especially since there was quite a bit of planning which we left till later which resulted in fewer instructors coming for the practices. 4 days 3 nights omg. By the 3rd night I had severe eyebags. Also caused quite a bit of stress for nat and karin but I think they did a great job, given the overall non-spontaneous crappiness of the exco. And I enjoyed this year's food too - though I think its quite subjective. Felt the happiest on the 3rd day when the official games was cancelled in favour of practicing for cfa night though - because the game was more spontaneous I guess, plus I could just sit there and stone when the others were playing cards. Projector died on us (actually it died on guitar first) so our movie nights fizzled out. Oh, and yongxue's gossiping. HAHA. I heard that cfa night was dead, which is a far cry from the previous years. My only impression of anniversary lunch now was the sheer amount of food left. And the amount of oil in the yam paste. And WINE. First it was fruit wine, then ice wine. Mmm. *hic*

The Keys. I was the Keeper of the Keys during the camp. I was so scared of losing them. And the stupid indemnity forms.

Oh, and its a good thing that kx knew zixiang well, because we ended up stealing a lot of rooms from them in the end. =P I felt quite bad at the end because the room booking list messed up and I was allocated more rooms than I remember booking! Most memorable incident was the carpet rolling thing - I was given the impression that it was some complicated matter and I had to promise to ask the guitar people how it was done before sheila would give me the key, and then it ended up being a non-issue. And the projector. That was pretty funny too: "Our booking starts at 2pm. It is now 1.58pm: you have 2 minutes to return our projector."

I think my thoughts for camp are this disjointed because of the severe lack of sleep - I remember less.

SYF this year - nyco and hcco got honours! Hehe. nyco - the number of seniors who went back took up more than 3 rows of seats. And at the end, we all did 山歌 together - as one nyco, past and present. Just yelling out the words of that cheer was a strange feeling, of something very familiar, very close to heart. Skipping lecture was SO worth it! =P I need to start acting my age. -cough- and hcco was so so so so so good! 大地回春 was SO GOOD OMG. Like someone in the audience behind said, this is what you call first class honours! This is why hcco is crowned the best jc co every syf! Always pushing the existing boundaries, always creating new frontiers. Us seniors were so proud that day - proud of our juniors, and proud that we were once and are part of this marvelous legacy.

Travel


Ethanol


Other stuff
Some of you might remember that I managed to do a little something to my back that resulted in some pain to it in February. The first time I spent time in a hospital bed, at all. Boy do I hate rushing lab reports. Biochem lab reports.

First Disaster of the Year.

I swear, the toaster hates me.

Deep down inside, I would love to produce decent food without any mishaps along the way. I'm fine with being the Queen of Culinary Disasters, really, I've no illusions about my prowess in the kitchen, but I would also like to stop messing up my food. It really sucks, because I know that even though this is the 21st Century, girls are still expected to know how to cook. And I do, really, except that I really suck at it. I thought that all was not lost after managing to produce pancake breakfast, grandma's porridge for travel purposes (twice) and 2 full dinners in montreal all by myself, in addition to helping out whenever we ate at home and he cooked, plus my decent tasting instant noodles (finally!!!). Apparently not.

Where was I? Oh, the toaster.

Yes. This toaster gives me grief. This is the one that I managed to pull the timer knob out from, the very first time I used it. Apparently the heating bars also go on and off as they please. So there I was, watching the toaster heat up my bun when the stupid heating bar decided to go on strike. I figured that it wouldn't heat up again anyway, so I might as well do something else waiting for the "ping" that signaled the end of the cycle and hence reheating that stupid bun. I came back in and continued surfing Facebook. What do you know! A few minutes later I smelt something. Bad. My bun was reduced to a black smoky mass. The stupid heating bar thingy somehow decided to resume work.

Nice, I tell you. The element found in the greatest abundance in bread is carbon, and nothing so resembled coal like that black smoky stinking mass that I extracted from the toaster before it actually caught fire and acted like a real mass of charcoal. Kinda reminds me of that black mass(es) limpy and I produced in stuttgart after clean forgetting all about the 2 buns that we left in the oven when Frau Westner announced that lunch was available. That stank, too.

Je ne comprends pas.

Nous sommes mardi 18, et il est vingt-trois heures. Quelle est la date à zéro heure zéro une?

What is this qn asking for?!


edit*: now I do. Thanks pam!

gecko.

The 2 shelves on my wall are gone, and I'm not used to the ugly holes and marks on the wall - I keep thinking they're lizards darting across my field of vision.

I'm not done playing yet!

Ironic, isn't it?

y2sem2's starting the week after and I'm almost done with module bidding (one more left! I hope I get it.) and I'm not as miserable as last sem because I should have familiar company for all modules this time round! Woots. I'm not feeling as enthusiastic as I should be though, probably because I am not looking at the full timetable yet.

The decision to take part in the model un conference thingy is starting to bite me in the butt: meeting on Monday, plus paper due on Friday! AHH. Not to mention that there's a rehearsal on Tuesday, performance on Saturday which is driving me crazy - I am starting to feel the "I can't do this, I suck big time, I'm screwing up the entire piece" mindset which comes every time I take on a solo of some sort. Not Good. I am supposed to be carefree and happy here. Bright and Shiny! The only good thing about the week is meeting up with cons somewhere in between.

Its about time to go for chem tuition. I drop bio stuff during the lesson so much, they might as well ask me to teach bio too.

6R'99

Us in 1999,

And some of us in 2008. Its been 9 years.

Today was the most successful huge class gathering in recent years! I went late to novena, where some of us met up with mrs hee after so long. (The last we saw her was probably in 2001/2002) We don't have a habit of going back to rulang every Teachers' Day because both mrs hee and 潘老师 retired soon after we left. (The stresses of teaching a very rebellious 6R class in comparison to our seniors and juniors, perhaps. =X) Us girls didn't change very much (even if we did, it wasn't very obvious since 12 of us ended up in ny and 3 in rg, so we did see each other around very often) but the guys would probably beg to differ. When I turned up at novena square, the people present were meizhen, stephanie, isaac, leslie, carine, simin, robin, kailing, kelly and weikeong. And mrs hee, of course. It took me around 5 minutes to figure out that weikeong was weikeong and not zhixian or chunyin. Mrs hee didn't change much either: she still looks 10 years younger than her actual age. Sat around and chatted for a while, and it was kinda weird at first because we really haven't seen some people for so long, so obviously there was awkward silences. I was amused that when mrs hee spoke, we all naturally quietened down! HAHA!

After a while mrs hee left, so we sat around for longer and debated where to go. Originally wanted to head to starbucks at orchard since apparently joan was working there, but she was ill today. Eventually settled on city hall, meizhen, stephanie, carine and simin left and we were joined by yuqing, wai and ruisi for dinner at imperial treasure. Loads of catching up (not so much at the girls table though, since by some coincidence all 5 of us present went to ny). Later went to tcc to drink stuff and laugh even more. All the recounting was hilarious - science cards! (though that was pri3/4) and the reading of chinese texts, and singing of national anthem, open rebellion against certain teachers and -cough- principal. And the cheap gang (buy cheap goods! lol!) with the "mrs hee! got probbbblem!" and little squabbles that now sound so stupid, and dental nurse (omg) and the never-ending math problem sums and homework doing at the reading corners (and the poor junior prefect who tried to terrorise some of us by scolding us for some stupid reason and eventually was terrorised herself when us p6 prefects decided to put our ties back on - us including the then head and assistant head prefects. i think we were evil.) and chess club and ms che and choir WHAHAHAA sighhhhh...

To me it was quite weird having a class gathering without joan and yixue around. Hmm.

I love 6R'99!!

The itch to kamikaze strikes...

I'm still toying with the idea of sitting for grade 8 guzheng and dizi exams. But at the age of 21, it sounds like a joke. Especially when I started on the guzheng when I was 9 but literally stopped at 16 after I sat for the O level music performance exam; and the dizi when I was 13 but stopped seriously practicing after 16 (meaning I no longer practiced solo items which required greater levels of ability and therefore improvements but only stuck to orchestral demands, which are rarely taxing until syf rolls around) but who cares that I've taken a loooong break! I'd still look like a loser going for grade 8 examinations at this age and experience level. Bah.

Alternatively I could try the diploma exams (HAHA!) but the jump in guzheng standards from grade 8 to diploma is... downright scary and intimidating. And I will die from oxygen deprivation and extensive muscle spasms at the end of 2 dizi solo pieces back to back, without even starting on the 3rd. And most gz and dz teachers stay far far away - the gz teacher I was supposed to learn from after jls kicked me off his self-styled mountain stays somewhere in bedok, and I know that yzy now lives at EXPO.

Why do I love to pile on the workload and drive myself to suicide à la lemming, I do not know. (And yes, I know that lemming suicide is a misconception.) The coming semester is going to be hard academically - for some reason I just bomb out at lsm which isn't open book right at the very end - biochem and anat and cell bio comes to mind: B pluses instead of the expected A range. And I am determined to avoid this fate. Plus there's going to be statistics once again, which is going to be a rough ride evinced by the numerous complains by people who have done it. I like bacteria (the cute little buggers!) so I'm going to do the other 6mc experimental module, plus my chances of sep anywhere are pretty slim, so I shouldn't take any level3000 modules in anticipation of it. And despite all my talk about never doing any more arts modules, I'm going to try to get psychology 1101. So that makes 22mc - 5.5 regular modules. CAP target for these 5 modules only: 4.3, which will bring my cap to 4.04 - still sucky, but at least it's north. And realistic. (Not to mention that the exam dates are really bad.)

Away from academia, I'm still sticking to french, the concert's this semester and the exco's shorthanded, I'm giving O level bio/chem tuition to a student and still looking for another student and am also involved in a model UN conference thingy. Plus I really do think I should continue with volunteer work. And maybe restarting driving lessons. And I really have to stick to finishing up o level physics: mingyan mentioned that maybe I should get some tutor for that but I refuse to pay, so I need loads of self discipline. Realistically speaking, I'm probably not going to restart driving lessons anytime soon even though I'm more keen on it now, nor volunteer work, although it shames me to say it.

Most importantly, amid all the work, I must not forget God.

Towards the end of the last semester I was so caught up in work and deadlines and the huge stack of stuff to mug and all that ironically, I started relying on myself alone. Small wonder that I worried too much and lost quite a bit of sleep and felt utterly overwhelmed and negative and everything. Not proud to admit it now, but well, I made a mistake, and I shall learn from it =)

Hic.

I am dead tired, and drinking way toooooo much ethanol beyond healthy limits of my wallet. There was the dessert wine at the dessert bar, then some vodka and white wine during the countdown, and singapore sling just now.

Great, I can't remember the name of that bar now (The penny black?). Not like it matters. Heh. I didn't know what to get, so randomly picked out something which looked like it had the most amount of sweet syrup. It worked, because I couldn't exactly taste the alcohol. Tried a bit of cosmopolitan, which reminded me of those lime dishes found in chinese seafood restaurants when you order crabs or prawns, and taste which reminded me of those kind of alcohol swabs in sterile packets. I still get transported back into the lab whenever I put an alcoholic drink to my nose/lips, which is kind of marring any enjoyment of ethanol. The joys of a life science student...

Technically, money was not spent during the countdown, but the fact remains that I'm spending quite a bit on an activity that has the potential to kill off my sad, sad liver. Perhaps I never should have touched that bottle of ice wine in montreal.

And I will get fat too. Not a good habit, ethanol guzzling is.

Upon hearing that I had visited a bar, my very kind brother said, "What did you drink there? Fruit juice?" in the super derisive/kiampa tone. Which reminds me, ym and I were discussing younger brothers and their stupid/evil comments the other day, and we came up (as a joke!) with a support group! The Elder Sisters (with a Younger Brother) Club. And ym said "club motto: stop at one!" I nearly died laughing. Evil, I tell you.

Seriously...

STOP saying I'm thin, that I don't eat, that I should be eating more, that I should put on 5kg more, BECAUSE I'm NOT thin, I DO eat, any more food will be OVEREATING, and I should LOSE 2kg. I am FAR, FAR AWAY from thin.

Random thoughts after some variety show on TV just now: I didn't know science canteen had any good food besides spinelli, and I thought the long queues at the claypot stall was because of slow service, not exceptionally high demand.

And 2008 comes along.

Bonne Année! Prost Neujahr! Happy New Year!

I'm not exactly in a very reflective mood for 2007 - partly because it will have to involve digging out events that happened in the recent week which I would rather not because going through life not thinking about those issues does dull some of the pain.

As of now I only have one resolution, and one hope, for 2008. The resolution is to work harder for everything else. The hope, is that the last week was just a nightmare that I'm going to wake from soon, and everything will be as it was again.

The ushering in of the new year was spent at yisheng's place. Twas a pretty subdued affair (the countdown part) - we're all getting old and jaded. I got so used to the sugar quantity in dessert wine that my first sip of white wine in a while was a shock.