Thoughts from a soggy mind - best served Cold

Well, not exactly grammatically correct, my title. But yeah, it’s 2.8 and not 2 or 3 because i’m still not entirely done with the third. In case you’re wondering, i’m talking about the exams/ assignments that I have before the spring break.

Last week, BIOL1004 Formal Report was handed in on Monday. Not exactly my best piece of work, not when I had to prepare for CHEM1201 as well. But at least I did my best so I’m quite happy with it, no complaints there. Then came CHEM1201 mid-semester exam on Thursday night. Judging by the content in the textbook I would have approached this exam with much apprehension but past-year papers were quite okay so I ended up just going in without much of a worry. And it was allright

This coming week I have a BIOL1009 mid-sem on Thursday and a PHYS1004 formal report due on Friday. Happy to report that the report (pun intended) is 80% complete - hence the "2.8 down" above. All that’s left are two diagrams to draw by hand… Which is also why I decided to give myself some time off and type this post =p

So practically all that’s left is BIOL1009..and it’s a  bit of a pain =( Not to say I don’t enjoy the course content though; it certainly is very interesting. But it’s hard to remember that  Class Cephalopoda refers to octopuses and squids while  Class  Cephalochordata comprises of the lancets =S  Still, naming stuff isn’t a major part of the assessment (rote learning is strongly discouraged here, which is a welcome change) so it should be allright…

After today, there’s only 5 more days to go to the much awaited spring break! Thankfully there aren’t any major assignments to complete during the break so I should get to enjoy most of my two-week holiday =)

That’s all, take care folks. All the best to those having exams or are swamped with assignments!

On Monday 13th August 2007 I celebrated my first birthday in Australia; my first birthday away from my family. And as Jason puts it, it’s also another milestone in the sense that it marks two decades of my existence on Earth

And it has been the best birthday I’ve ever had. For one, absence makes the heart grow fonder and every single birthday wish from family members back in Malaysia meant even more. And I’ve really been remembering that it’s my birthday partly because Sis‘ birthday card reached 3 weeks early (she just couldn’t trust Pos Malaysia) so i’ve been looking at the birthday card on my wall for 20-odd days before the day finally arrived. The card from Mum and Dad arrived a week early, too. And then, the celebrations….

I was invited to a birthday dinner on Sunday night at Unilodge - courtesy of friends over there. And when I reached…Omg. Touched beyond words. For a while I was too stunned to do anything but just stand/sit around and grin stupidly (this would repeat itself a few times, refer below) as Su Yin went flying past me once more getting things ready. The scale of the dinner! The sheer number of dishes, and some of my most favourite dishes on top of that. My all-time favourites, black bean soup and bitter gourd, followed by steamed fish, chicken, ma poh tofu, leek, and the must-have for a Chinese on his birthday: hard-boiled eggs! Many many thanks to Su Yin, Sze Huey, Wan Phei, Wei Min and Yuet Ling for preparing everything! Can’t thank you gals enough..it was indeed an unforgettable meal =)

Oh, they baked a birthday cake too! And for the 2nd time that night, I was grinning and smiling like a complete idiot when they sang the Birthday song to me..touched beyond words; and the cake looked simply beautiful.

And my appreciation goes to the guests too. Thanks Betsy, Jason, Jared, Shern Ren, and Yeam for coming. Your presence was equally important, too. Special thanks goes to Yeam for rushing to Unilodge despite just reaching Canberra after City2Surf in Sydney. And now the pics:

I don’t know if this pic does justice to the magnitude of amazement and gratitude I felt when I first saw the dishes. Even if a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, it still isn’t enough =)

Cutting my birthday cake (baked by Sze Huey & Su Yin)…you can see from my face that I didn’t really wanna cut it up =p

And that was what happened on Sunday 12th August, the eve of my birthday. Came back to Ursies, prepared for class on Monday (7 hours of class =S) and went to bed early. Happiness in large doses can make you tired, apparently. Particularly when you mix it with other things like gratitude, surprise and..other things (I really need to brush up on my vocab!).

My birthday proceeded like any normal Monday, bar the influx of SMSes. My lab in the afternoon finished early so all in all it was a better Monday afternoon than usual It was at night that things got abit hairy..starting from dinner time. I had explicitly warned Jared not to do it but I forgot about Jason- he told me that Barney wanted to speak to me so I went to see him (we were sitting at different tables). One look at Barney’s surprised expression told me I’m in deep shit. And yes, that split second prevented me from stopping Jason from announcing to everyone in the dining room that it was my birthday. Impeccable timing, i must say =p So…everyone joined in and amidst the singing I could hear Jared’s shout of "He’s blushing!!" while I stood and looked around grinning stupidly (again).

At about 9.30pm Chern came to my room and told me that something went wrong with the Malaysian recipe that I had passed to him- apparently the chef couldn’t understand it. But I was on MSN at that time AND he looked suspicious. So i played for time and finally, i decided to give in and followed him to his room. The coast looked clear though, we were alone in the living room. But as I found out in a minute, they don’t give Senior Residents a two-room flat and a storage closet for nothing. Nearly had a heart attack when so many people burst out of nowhere! Poor Jared and Lawrence were squashed in the storage closet for a good 15 minutes =p Many Ursies were there - thanks for coming! While I was still recovering from shock they sang Happy Birthday to me and so I sat and grinned stupidly (doesn’t this sound familiar by now?)

(L-R): Birthday card from Sis, Mum and Dad, Unilodge friends, Ursies, Wei Min.

As 12am showed on my alarm clock, signaling the end of my birthday, I pored over the past 30 hours or so. It had been amazing.

Many thanks once again for all you’ve done to make this such a memorable birthday for me; I appreciate every single thing, even the smallest detail

p/s: A note of gratitude to all of you who sent me birthday greetings either via SMS, MSN, Friendster comments or wrote on my Facebook wall. I really appreciate them!

Yet another week has flown by and i’m counting down to the spring break with relish. It’s amazing how sometimes you just don’t want time to pass by so quickly and yet it does, other times you want it to go faster and yet it just seems to slow to a crawl. Arghh.

That said, tis’ been quite a happy and happening week for me. For starters, I actually didn’t have BIOL1004 labs while the PHYS1004 lab turned out okay too despite the inevitable rush (wrote Methods, drew "Diagrams" and finished Conclusion in about 7 minutes). The fun part was my BIOl1009 practical this week - Snail dissection. While the practical itself was kinda fun (I mean, how interesting can snails be?), the real show was the special ‘meal’ we had prior to the prac. Courtesy of our lecturer Dr Blackwell, we had a selection of invertebrates cooked in various styles. And they were all invertebrates we had studied in previous lectures so you kind of look at them in a different light, lol.

Clockwise from top: Baby clam, krill, jellyfish in spicy oil, octopus, mussel, snail in garlic butter and chocolate-coated insect (i got a cricket)

Insect larvae with Mexican Spice..other flavours include Cheddar Cheese and BBQ :S

Mr Snail prior to being cut apart and poked at everywhere. Pardon the blurry image, had to snap this in a hurry.

The cricket didn’t taste all that nice(as expected) but the snail was surprisingly very good. Haven’t tried the larvae though.

Allright..guess that’s all for now. Gotta go revise, mid-sem exams are coming up and I’m still not prepared. Take care guys, and best of luck.

p/s: Weather’s really bad lately. Take care of your health!

Okay…here I am typing this post again, 24 hours after I tried to do so but discovered that my brain was inexplicably jammed. Maybe I just shouldn’t blog on Saturdays….hurm.

I guess I shouldn’t try to blog about my week given that it’s way too complex with good and bad news all mixed and mashed into hazy unreality. Suffice to say, I’m glad that for every single problem that I faced this week, a silver lining emerges =)

So tomorrow will be the start of week 4. Which means I’m inching ever closer to Weeks 6 & 7 (read: Mid-sem exams and assignments!) and also the much-awaited spring break. So far things have been going pretty okay i guess, even if the current course content has made me frequent the library more often. Let’s just hope things stay the way they are; or I dun mind them getting a lil better too =p

And yes, it’s finally almost the start of the football season again! Almost 3 months of passivity can drive any football fan mad and the only saving grace, i guess, was the explosive transfer market this time around. As a Man Utd fan, I can’t wait to see the new signings Nani, Anderson, Hargreaves and Tevez play. Rumours abound of Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez forming an attacking triumvirate similar to Barca’s…is it true? Can’t wait for new season to start! And the sale of Kieran Richardson to Sunderland for 6M pounds has to be THE transfer deal of the season =) On the negative side of things, Giusseppe Rossi has left for Villareal (though we still have first refusal on him) and why oh why is John O’Shea still around??? Still, let’s hope Man Utd perform to the standards predicted by the majority of the pundits and run away with all that’s on offer.

It’s the Community Shield tonight and sad to say, I can’t watch it Both Utd’s and Chelsea’s preseason form have been so-so and i guess it’ll be touch-and-go as usual. Even though there’s no points at stake, hopefully we can strike a psychological blow on them!

Allright..i’m getting all excited over this footy business it seems. Time to stop and go read up on BIOL1009 then…class starts at 9am tomorrow (sighs). Take care folks, and to all football fans, celebrate the arrival of the new season!

p/s: Had a semi-productive trip to the library today. Try to figure out what that means