Stories From A Weird Wizard

Twelve Days Before Christmas ‘Project’

2012-01-29T15:24:00.001Z

For Christmas 2011, I wished to do some videos about it but no idea came concretely until I saw this vlog from Bertiebertg’s channel. He planned to video twelve days of Christmas to make up of all the less videos he made because he used to be a quite frequent vlogger back then. He might not be the super duper vlogger, but some of his videos are definitely funny and really ‘vlog’ as versus ‘video’. By this, I decided to the same thing but in a much mundane way. It’s a challenge for me because I had not been videoing very frequently and I don’t actually have holiday until the exact day of Christmas! But after all, I managed to came up with eleven videos with me talking about my twelve days before Christmas, starting from 14th of December, 2011 to 25th of December, the Christmas Day itself. The theme will have me singing each sentence of the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ in Shrek version in each day until the very last where we had the ensemble!

These are links of all the individual post of each videos and their ‘background story’:

12	11	10	9	8	7
6	5	3,4	2	1

I hope you enjoy!

Christmas Day!!!

2012-01-29T15:23:00.001Z

My Christmas Day video was video-ed late at night, same as the previous ones. I had been playing for the whole day, that’s why. First of all scenes, I entered with my excitement of finding my ‘fez’, no seriously – my Santa hat! After days of searching for it – Papa actually found it in my drawers, how could that happened? But not to question more as I’m glad enough to find it back. And I spent my Christmas Day waking up rather normally, nor too early to bounce on bed shrieking ‘presents!’ nor too late until I miss the lunch. We had buffet for lunch, which was pretty ‘traditional’ and good. We had it in Golden Sands, which we booked a table the day before. And I realized I had goodbyed the days when I could really eat a lot during buffet meals. I picked few of each and that’s it for my tummy. But still, I love buffet in a sense that I can choose what I want to eat instead of following the majority. I could start my meal with desserts, for example. Not that I did that, but I started my dessert rather early. But of course, the dessert arrangement for Golden Sands were with whole puddings and cakes on the platter and we cut off the portion we wanted. It’s good that I can take how much I need instead of what they give, but at the same time, the food tend to deformed easily after being dissected by the public over and over again. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the meal.

After lunch, we had a walk in Gurney, which is just around the corner as we drove along the Tanjung Bunga road, passing by Batu Feringghi which I admired all the time but couldn’t get a chance to go due to the crowd. I got myself two books as Christmas presents: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher and a Basic German book. I initially wanted to get a John Green book, but didn’t manage to find one. German book was now a great motivation to remind myself my goal to learn a new language. Later that day, I saw Sherlock on one of the channels, which surprised me as the only BBC channel I had was BBC World News.

Of course, as I had already planned that since the first video of this project, I ended the video with the mix of all twelve sentences of the Shrek version of ‘12 Days of Christmas’. I hope you like it!

Last, it was my promise to all of you my reader or my viewer, a Christmas present to all of you. It is my work, a Christmas short story I attempted. I hope you enjoy and comment about it. I am still learning to write, so good advice will help!

The link for the story is here, titled ‘The Forgotten Santa’:

http://www.booksie.com/fantasy/short_story/mafer/the-forgotten-santa

Second Day Before Christmas: Christmas Eve

2012-01-24T19:10:00.001Z

A very late video about Christmas Eve, in fact I was supposed to be in bed. Thus, that explained about me in my pyjamas. Yes, I wear proper pyjamas at home. To be truth, this video contained mostly craps I mumbled when I was sleepy, but it’s still interesting! I had Mee Goreng that day, which reminded me how I can’t really find that kind of Mee Goreng in Singapore, yet. And for dinner, I had meal at this stall which cooked really good Assam Prawn. At the same time, we were informed someone will not come back home for Christmas and I was laughing at the coincidence of me coming back home because I don’t want to break the tradition of being the first to not coming back home for Christmas.

And after like three days at home, with an average attempt of finding my old Santa hat, I still can’t find it! So, I was quite upset and became more upset when I found my birthday present from my parents which turned out to be the Papa Smurf soft toy! He had a red hat, which could have been so matching to my Santa hat!!! But no matter, I decided to name it ‘Smurfy’ and added him to my soft toy collection.

And here goes my sleepy Christmas Eve post, welcoming the Christmas Day…

Fourth and Third Day before Christmas

2012-01-24T18:57:00.001Z

It’s funny how I am posting about my previous trip home when I’m on vacation back home again in less than or almost a month. But this is no awkward situation to me as I should be thick-face enough for that after so many similar occurrence. Well, let’s not deviate this further and continue with my adventure of the fourth and third day before Christmas.

As expected, I was late in video-ing my video after I reached home. I didn’t manage to video anything in Changi, nor did I manage to video a log on the fourth day as well. In the end, I had to combine the two days together, featuring certain small things I did. Interesting mentions like the market should be featured. This is the very thing I missed about home as well. So much as I don’t really enjoy an everyday-routine of going to the market, the market trip was a really precious one when I went to Singapore. It was a dry plus wet market, with hawker stall, occupying streets and junctions. The stalls in this market was not pre-built cubicles but ‘trolleys’ of stalls, which could really be moved around. As time passed on, things get so systematic and arranged that we don’t get this kind of market anymore around. The name of the market was known as something else, but we called it ‘Apollo’ because in older days, this piece of land was a factory producing the snack ‘Apollo’! Anyone who knows Raja Uda should know and visit this market. They don’t look clean or neat, they don’t sell high end or advanced stuff; but it was a different feeling that makes you feel the street spirit!

Next, I watched Sherlock Holmes 2 film. In between this film and the last film, I watched Sherlock series by BBC, so I could make a few differences between them. However, the film was not totally bad or anything. I enjoyed the visual effects though not the plot. Some scenes actually reminded me of Deathly Hallows Part 2. Especially the running through the forest part, but in Sherlock Holmes’ this part was an enhanced carbon copy I would say. Watched this movie with my parents, but because of the ticket limit, my seat was three seats away from them…

After all these, Tzu Cha was the most common thing I could mention because when I get back home, the whole family would eat in tzu cha stall, be it a restaurant or stall. Tzu Cha is very common in Penang that it was like the usual for families who eat out. My family rarely had time to cook because of our schedule, eating out at tzu cha is like memories with my family! And with that, it actually made me precious more when my parents did cook at home!

And I guess that’s all for this part of the video…

A Seminar about Science Communication

2012-01-17T07:07:00.000Z

Just came back from this talk by Dr Maureen Rouhi, deputy editor-in-chief of the Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) in American Chemical Society (ACS), titled "Communicating Your Science To The Public: Why and How". It was a superb talk, even though I was late for quite a few minutes and there were no super-impressive fireworks going off in the middle of the speech.

The talk started with introducing to the audience the field of science communication, journalism and writing. She focused on what is the importance of this field and what do the reporters expect for a newsworthy mention. Of course, writing about Science is not just about writing about your research for your own lab members. It almost served nothing if you can't explain what you are doing to the outside world, your co-field scientists, scientists from other field, intellectuals, reporters and even public like your own neighbour! And the thing is when you are trying to tell the Uncle selling chicken rice what are you doing, you don't actually say 'I am doing protein purification of a three-finger toxin, by using resins or chromatography and blah with many more technical terms', instead you might want to consider 'I am working on this protein which has a significant structure similar to three-fingers, where I try to produce and separate it from others'. Well, maybe I am still not good at summarizing it, but I hope you get what I meant.

Next would be why should people care about what you are talking about. When you say 'I had my breakfast', that only tell people what you did. It didn't tell others the point of the conversation other than it being a polite talk for awkward silence, or - it might be a starter of a conversation! Compare that sentence to this instead, 'I had my breakfast this morning and I saw a car accident just outside the office'. By this, you might be getting some, although not all, of your audience asking, 'Oh, car accident, how did it happen?' Things like this catch the audience attention because they could roughly relate things to them, maybe it's someone they knew, maybe it was a faulty traffice light they passed by everyday or maybe they might want to avoid that street later during lunch break. Many of us might not like this way of living, doing things that has concrete purpose to uus, but I believe everything has its purpose, it depends on how did you package your information.

The next part of the talk was a case study about the arsenate-DNA news which was once a blast on the media. I remembered about the news but didn't really follow the trail at that time. I guess I was a much different person back then. Other sections include attitudes when getting your work to the media and also how the press work to bring your work to the platform. It has a few point with it and I would conclude it as 'treat nicely and respect each every people from every profession and be considerate'. It's an effort to work on research, it's an effort to write about your research too! Overally, the talk have substance and I am glad I got to grab some time to be in there.

Fifth Day before Christmas

2012-01-16T15:18:00.001Z

The day I went back home for Christmas, I did my video before the trip in the office after my office hour, dragging the time. It was a lonely day because most people were on leave that day and I was strictly speaking, the guard of my lab. But of course, different personnel took leave at different timing gave good things like we can make sure someone is operating the lab and everything. And since I was in the office and I had no idea if I ever would have the chance of making a video in Changi, I made this video a rather introduction of my work nature.

I couldn’t reveal in detail what I did because that was and always is confidential. In return, I explained what I did in a rather rough manner, to at least draw out a wide idea of what a lab technologist do! I find a good introduction of my work may be a good way to make other people understand about us more. Plus, I was just too excited about my job that I must share it with someone else! So, here you go !

Sixth Day before Christmas

2012-01-16T15:08:00.001Z

On the sixth day before Christmas, which is the 20th of December, I decided to join in some of my friends to visit the floating book fair, Logos Hope. But first of all, we had a good dinner in one of the Asian Kitchen in Vivo ( I think it’s the name). I had banana with coconut milk as dessert, shared Xiao Long Bao with others and my own bowl of Zha Jiang Mian. They were superb!

After the dinner, we went to the ship which held the book fair. It was quite creepy to find the deck with cafe looked almost like the one I imagined for my story except mine was filled with magic, but either way, the ship felt too stable to be one. I guess it’s too safe to be in a safe harbour? In the end, I did get myself three books: Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Don Quixote, previous two being by William Shakespeare while the last one was by Cervantes. I bought Shakespeare because I thought it is time for me to seriously learn something well off than just knowing a poem of two out of Macbeth or Romeo and Juliette. As for Don Quixote, it was a recommendation of classics, so I just had a ride on that excuse!

Having to have had so much fun shopping for books (a disastrous thing to do for me because it can bankrupt me!), I still have to return to my room to be reminded on the reality – going home on the next day. This explained why you will see me in my pyjamas, hopping on and off screen just to pack up my things. Yeaps, that’s it!

Seventh Day before Christmas

2012-01-16T14:44:00.001Z

Everything was boring until I decided to do something to lighten up the mood. I searched for the guitar chords for ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ and started practising before getting into the version that appeared on the video. But anyway, it mentioned about figgy puddings and I would have looked like ‘WHAT?!’ because I was never a fan of figgy pudding. Not that they are terrible, but the taste just was not for me. I would think they tasted too sweet when I actually gulped down chocolates much sweeter than that. I would think they tasted like fruit when I scooped away half of another fruit pudding. So, in the end, I concluded, I was just not for figgy puddings. Maybe in future, I might start learning to appreciate that delicacies; but for now, no!

All in all, I still enjoy playing the song though, felt happy with it!

Eighth Day before Christmas

2012-01-15T07:34:00.001Z

Eighth day before Christmas was a Sunday. This day, I attended a senior’s holy matrimony. Truly speaking, this senior was not like my very close senior or anything like that, but once a while along my university year I talked to him or listened to those wise words from him with other seniors. And the thrilling part was how the couple were both Keviians, setting the ceremony like a hall gathering at some point. We managed to took one Keviians photo with generations of Keviians, which is astonishing. It reminds me of going back to Chung Ling alumni and you will see seniors who are as old as your granddaddy!

The reception served nice food. I am glad I decided to follow this bunch just to have a look of the ceremony.

Ninth Day before Christmas

2012-01-14T04:00:00.001Z

A lazy day with almost no foreseen interesting story to tell until I broke the fluorescence tube! I was keeping it like a treasure and didn’t dare to use it at all and this happened! And yes, since it broke I might as well make full use of it right?!

Posing it with the soft toys!

Or even waving it like a magic wand…

But after all, I found my Santa hat at night and mentioned about the Dickens 2012 Writing the City things…

Tenth Day before Christmas

2012-01-14T03:29:00.001Z

Postponed the tenth day before Christmas to be done in the early morning of ninth day before Christmas, because I had been playing too much by staying over in friend’s hostel! I guess I was seriously having too much fun that I misread the eleventh day’s line instead of tenth day’s. That day was a supposed day for swimming after my work. Halfway towards hall, it started drizzling and I encountered a snake slithered just across the road in front of me!

I was stunned but decided not to disturb the environment and quickened my footsteps to hall. We decided to wait till the rain stop by watching an episode of Doctor Who (more of me keep advertising ). We had ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ a rather heart warming episode which is individual enough for beginners. Sounds like I’m giving out lecture on Doctor Who, eh? What happened was, we finish the episode to find the rain becoming heavier. Lucky we never defy the odds and went for swimming or we would have been thrown out of pool even before we finish a lap. We ended up watching quite a few series and talked. I felt happy to have someone to watch Doctor Who with me!!!

Eleventh Day before Christmas

2012-01-14T03:18:00.001Z

Spending first half of the day doing the same thing and the other half being a crazy fellow in my friend’s house celebrating her birthday! Her family is awesome, her house is awesome and her, Carmen, is awesome too! For such a wonderful friend, I decided to give her my recent drawing, the ‘The Way to KEVII Hall’ since it was her last birthday in hall and most of us will leave hall due to graduation, except me who stepped out one year earlier. We had games in her house and meet her family members who are really nice to us. The food was really good, vegetarian with really nice taste. I wanted for more but knew I better not act like a total eater rudely in someone else’s house! We get to know more friends as well!

Twelfth Day before Christmas

2012-01-14T02:50:00.001Z

This day looked like nothing but I did something crazy! After my ex-roomie left the house, denying to pay rent for the following months, I had the room for myself and I came to serious thinking. This is the time I should try to make the space feels home, even for a mere four months. So, I made a rough calculation of space and came up with a simple shifting plan. I was surprised I could just push the whole cupboard around the room because it was pretty light after half of the cupboard was emptied! In another sense, the arrangement I ended up with had a certain similarity with my old room at home. And the exciting thing is there’s a big space in the middle of the room now that I can literally sit down and have a tea or just do some art work there! But there’s the other side of it of course. The light bulb was not no longer on top of my study because it was shifted to next to the window. In the morning, it wouldn’t have any problem due to the sunlight but at night? This is when my desk lamp come into use. The arrangement had made the wiring less messy and a better arrangement in lalachacha stuff (my dictionary define this as ‘all those loose ends of stuff’). I spent the whole night cleaning and had this video. But after this, the whole room felt very comfortable, hooray!

Gift from France

2012-01-08T07:22:00.001Z

This is a gift from quite a long time. In fact, it was for my birthday in 2010! Thanks to my friends who went for SEP in France. They sent me this gift, a book of the Petit Nicolas series. I was just overwhelmed by it because I just watched the Petit Nicolas movie that time and was introduced to such an interesting series. Its simple French is so suitable for a beginner like me and a good way to understand French culture! Most of all, is how my friends actually sent this all the way from France. I truly appreciate that!

And this is the post card attached to it!

Not-So Grad Trip: Cathedral of the Good Shepherd

2012-01-07T07:29:00.001Z

Just reachable and see-able from CHIJMES, was another building crowded with followers on that Sunday morning. They had just finished their Sunday mass and I walked into the cathedral, ignoring the crowd. The other side of the cathedral was having some reconstruction due to its old age. I could see some cracks on the wall which they were trying to rebuild the support as so to maintain the safety of the building. Being built between 1843 and 1847, it is not surprising this building does need some fixing, isn’t it?

According to certain websites, in February 1843, a French priest, Father Jean-Marie Beurel got a land from the colonial government and built Church of the Good Shepherd. The foundation stone was laid by a merchant resident in Singapore, John Conolly, on 18th of June 1843. This information could be seen on this plate below.

Probably because I am still not a professional in looking at architectal style and art pieces, this church is of Renaissance style. It only made sure to me through the reference site:

The architect Denis Lesley McSwiney apparently competed with John Turnbull Thomson for the design of this new church, with McSwiney's design chosen because his had been cheaper. It was built at a cost of just over $18,000, in Renaissance style with the traditional cruciform plan and Roman Doric pillars. Shortly after the completion of the church, Father Beurel blessed it on 6 June 1947.

According to the same source, the church gained status to Cathedral in 1888 and “On 14 February 1897, the Bishop of Malacca, the Reverend Rene Fee consecrated the church after all bills were settled. The relics of St. Laurent Imbert, the first priest to visit Singapore (later martyred in Korea), are preserved in the Cathedral”. As of its fate now, it had been gazetted as national monument on 28 June 1973.

What would be interesting was a real organ in the now Cathedral.

Around the cathedral stood different statues. Some were symbolical and some were for commemorating such as the one with the pope to remember his visit years ago.

References:

1) Tan, Bonny. “Cathedral of Good Shepherd". http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_756_2004-12-17.html. April 1999.

Not-So Grad Trip: CHIJMES

2012-01-07T03:27:00.001Z

I would say that this is the first stop I had for the half-day trip. I happened to pass by this area while travelling east for an interview in Duke-NUS two to three times and this building caught my attention in the midst of the rushing traffic. That was the moment I came up with the idea of taking a trip around Singapore. I realized I had been in Singapore for three years yet haven’t really walk through the whole map. This made me biased if I were to say Singapore is a boring place when I didn’t spend some times look through it thoroughly. So I started to do some basic research on the maps near that area, setting CHIJMES as the first stop.

I managed to find an angle for the chapel which makes it look nice, capturing it from behind the building, near Caldwell House.

Of course, you should not be surprised to find the view towards CHIJMES looked like this because it was not a building located on top of a hill like the Athens Temple. Development had somehow ripped the good capturing view of it somehow.

And let us step into the place and find out what is CHIJMES. CHIJMES, which is its name currently, stands for Convent of Holy Infant Jesus Middle Education School. In fact, it started as CHIJ, a convent set up by four French nuns who came over from Penang in 1854. There’s a Caldwell House which is just next to the chapel building, which became the nun’s headquarters. The whole venue is located at Victoria Street in Downtown core. In November 1983, the Chapel offered its last service and went into diligent refurbishment until being gazetted in October 1990 as National Monuments of Singapore.

From several aspect of the chapel, there were some gothic element existed.

And so for the chapel part, there were beautiful columns and colourful tainted glass.

The fresco upon looked small here by intricate. I would like to say I fall for the tainted glass more this time.

Looking into the chapel, would be a view like this. Since it was closed that day, not sure due to it’s now a national monument or it’s just not open that day, I had to take this photo through the glass door.

From the outside, the view was like that:

And right next to the chapel was Caldwell House. There are corridors towards the sides, built with interesting structures and decorated with neoclassical elements.

The quarters however, had been transformed into a complex now with several restaurants and planted with some decorative plants, such as the hibiscus here.

The beautiful thing about this complex is that it was not just a flat ground with many restaurants. In the middle of the area, just next to the chapel, was thi lower ground which you could look down into it. It is a small piazza filled with tables and chairs for the restaurants. I wondered how would it look like when all the shophouses were working.

Next to CHIJMES’ entrance, there was this door, which was plated with ‘The Gate of Hope’

References:

1) Pan, Aram. “CHIJMES”. http://www.singaporevr.com/vrs/CHIJMES/CHIJMES.html. 2011.

2) Wijesinghe, Pushpitha. “Chijmes – Once a Catholic Convent now a leading Lifestyle Centre”. http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/chijmes-once-a-catholic-convent-now-a-leading-lifestyle-centre-3329754.html. September 2010.

Your Circles of Life

2012-01-04T16:53:00.000Z

This was a photo taken like very long time ago. I would guess it was last year or even before that :O. One of the best things that could ever happen when I went back home for vacation was to meet up with old friends. I mean, of course, the moment I step on the earth back in Penang, I would want to spend every minute and every second I've got with my family. Just by lying down and talk with my Mummy was just splendid and a very good way to pass the time, in my opinion. But more often, after days of snuggling at home, my family would start to remind me of catching up with my friends, especially my parents. They were always very concerned of how I should socialize outside the family circle. I guess, that's their way to force me to train myself to be more extrovert. And don't worry, I do enjoy the time I had with my friends, just that most of the time (I'm sorry, folks) I was just not the initiator.

But of course, this was like two years ago. What we have been through had changed so much until now. I should mention more about it in my future post where I will feature more about my outings with them! I could never believe I actually have this circle of friend in my life, truly lucky!

Photo album available here.

Reunion Video Trailer for 12th Batch Chung Ling Butterworth Graduate

2012-01-04T00:49:00.001Z

Truly speaking, this video has nothing to do to me because I am the 15th batch of graduate. Though, I could get the excitement aura from it because I was from the same school, Chung Ling Butterworth during secondary school and proceeded to Chung Ling High School Butterworth, which technically was the same school. They themed their reunion 《那些年》, the title of a film that was quite 'popular' in the sense of wakening all those 'old' people of their lovely carefree past. Though, in this video, I could relate more, I guess it was just because the settings was a place I grew up. We had times when we were just exhausted of activities and slept in between lessons. We had times when we went for sports and especially the guys would just play till they get themselves in mud. We had times when our teacher will 'pay someone a visit' or 'have a talk'. And the thing is, school life is so much more than this. I wonder if there will ever be a video which could bring all back, not just certain aspect. I think, that will be the rojak of school life... But anyway, I share this video so for your entertainment if you have nothing to do with it, or for message spreading if this video is calling for you to return back to our old school. Cheers! :)

One Day Out with Family

2012-01-03T15:50:00.001Z

Oh my, I can’t believe I can postpone a post for a year, but still I did this before, so what can I say? All I can do is to post this up and try my best in updating more in future, right? This post is about the day when my family had an outing. First we spent our afternoon in Queensbay because we wouldn’t want to walk on outdoor activities under the blazing sun, would we? And by accident, we actually had our meal in Dome, which is ridiculously more expensive than usual but at the same time really satisfying meal. So things made up, except that Papa have to pay for it *hides*, haha…

What was so interesting about Dome, to me, was not just it serves food quite of standard, but also the things inside the outlet. For example, I was particularly attracted to the map ceiling like that, with few paintings:

So, since the table there were quite small, me and Pleasure had one table while our parents had another. And we had really good food.

See, even their sugar packet looks classy, haha!

This is the one I had since I haven’t had any breakfast:

Pleasure had a salad which turned out to be quite good and filling. Even I drooled over it, seeing its deliciousness…

And we had each ordered different drinks, which looked quite similar roughly but tasted differently. I had forgotten the name of the order, sorry about it here…

After the meal, we travelled to Botanic Gardens for the supposed ‘flower festival’.

Either we had got the date wrong or because it was just a weekday, the garden was rather deserted, The flowers displayed were not as superb as usual as well. But no matter, we paid for the tram and had a small tour inside…

And outside the garden were stalls selling plants for domestics and we had a round in it. Papa was standing waiting us, since we took a rather long time to visit each and every of them…

The sky that day was quite beautiful, not all cloudy and not all shiny, a nice day to have an outing indeed…

So in the end I got myself a small cactus while my Mummy bought some different plants. We took a tram back to our car and continue our journey !

This is the place where I used to wonder where the staircases lead to…

And finally we reached where we wanted to visit, Straits Quay. The first thing I felt when I arrived was calm and peace. I guess, that might due to its newness or the space.

This is the particular view which I find, wow!

Just by looking how the place was arranged and how it was displayed made your heart just went calm. As a vacation, I wouldn’t mind sitting just here, enjoying the breeze while doing something rather relaxing.

And after having enough of the outdoors, we went indoors. Seriously, if you are finding something fun to do outside there, there’s nothing much except the view and feelings. There are literally no hawker stalls except some shop houses for food and good place for photography. They don’t allow you to swim, of course, as it’s a quay! So, yeah, that’s about it. The indoors were made quite splendid although not of a big size.

And there’s this spiral staircases which many would find more attraction in taking group photos on it…

The entrance of the whole place was rather of a moderate manner, with some delicate designs and seemed to be white washed buildings, except they weren’t as white washed as the Mediterranean’s. But the colour was quite satisfying, I would say…

I would say that I’m rather ashamed of this late post and having my first post in this new year as such thing, but I couldn’t lie, could I?

This is the album for the trip.

Celtic Thunder - Christmas 1915

2011-12-19T15:59:00.000Z

I came across this song while listening to a whole series of Christmas Songs. I liked quite some groups of singers like Straight No Chaser and Celtic Thunder. But apart from nice voice and interesting songs, I found meaning in this one, Christmas 1915. It speaks of a true story (well, assume what I read did not lie to me) of Christmas Truce, of how brotherhood formed between different armies on Christmas Eve in No Man's Land, minus-ing all the war and gunfire, just for one night - a night for peace...

Celtic Thunder - Christmas 1915 music video

Lyrics:
1915 on Christmas Day
On the western front the guns all died away
And laying in the mud on bags of sand
We heard a German sing from no man's land
He had tenor voice so pure and true
The words were strange but every note we knew
Soaring ore the the living dead and dammed

The German sang of peace from no man's land
They left their trenches and we left ours
Beneath tin hats the smiles bloomed like wild flowers
With photos cigarettes and pots of wine
We built a soldier's truce on the front line
Their singer was a lad of 21
We begged another song before the dawn
And sitting in the mud and blood and feed
He sang again the song all longed to hear

Silent night, no cannons roar
A king is born of peace for evermore
All's calm, all's bright
All brothers hand in hand
In 19 and 15 in no man's land

And in the morning all the guns boomed in the rain
And we killed them and they killed us again
At night they charged we fought them hand to hand
And I killed the boy that sang in no man's land

Silent night, no cannons roar
A king is born of peace for evermore
All's calm, all's bright
All brothers hand in hand
And that young soldier sings
And the song of peace still rings
Though the captains and all the kings
Built no man's land

Sleep in heavenly peace

Beary Shopping

2011-11-27T15:52:00.001Z

Just on the same shopping day for the youzhaquay and dau hua, we entered this shop selling cute stuff, especially lacy stuff! Seriously, I won’t really enter such shop if I were alone but Mummy, Pleasure and me went in no doubt. I do sneeze a bit of the fragrant inside but we get to observe all the interesting craft inside. Although it is a bit too exaggeratingly lacy, but I would not deny all these things are art craft! So we ended up buying something… Mummy let me and Pleasure choose one little bear each. But I was eyeing on this scholar bear, due to the date is near to my graduation.

But Mummy was expecting me to get a girly bear, like this:

After times of considering, all reasons are valid. Since Mummy wants me to have a rather girly bear because I’m a girl, and I want that scholar bear because I am going to graduate – so in the end, I got the privilege of getting two, haha!

But seriously speaking, the two looks quite compatible together. I wouldn’t doubt if someone just thought the two are meant to be wedding bears. But anyway, the shop worker added some perfume on them, so they smell rather fragrant when I hand them around my room !

The album is here.

Joyeusse Anniversaires!

2011-11-20T15:37:00.000Z

Here comes the day when I will have to do the same thing every year, my birthday. Right after Hallowe’en, it is my birthday; and right after mine, it’s my brother, Pleasure’s. So, being so far away from him, as we were pursuing our education in different university, I decided to draw something for us, for the birthdays. We used to share cake when we were young and slowly after that we started to have our own cakes, which landed us with two big cakes when November comes. But nonetheless, we would always finish the cake. This year’s drawing is themed around one of our funny memories. My brother successfully got to eat my ice cream while I was trying to collect something from the floor. Other than that, it was mixed with a memory of suspenders. I could still I used to think they were cool but just too difficult to wear because we kept growing taller and need to adjust the length accordingly all the time. Until one day, I realize, no one wear suspenders anymore (at least it’s not a need anymore).

Other than that, I was very lucky to celebrate my birthday in hall as well, even though I had left hall after graduation. Stephanie actually said she needed a pair of listening ears to her presentation practice, and so I accepted the invitation. They actually got me a slice of cake which was really very nice with chocolate, banana and oats. I have to say, it’s a special cake!

Of course the first thing was to make a wish, blow the candle and happily cut the cake….

I was given a calendar-like card and two bags of present, which was really lovely. Here is me trying to open my present so that they could see my surprise and happy look, haha. Seriously, I am really very happy about it. No matter what was it, I would gladly appreciate, that’s for sure.

What is more important was that I could still celebrate my birthday with a bunch of friends. Here is a photo of G3 girls as a group. We were always that crazy, I assume – well, we ARE that crazy all the time!

And we took loads of photos. Really appreciate these people who took some time out of their schedule to celebrate my birthday. That's the greatest honour I could get, I think.

And Stephanie gave me extra food when I went to listen to her presentation practice as well… These were really good. I had finished the chips and it’s addictive. Lucky it wasn’t a lot…

And what happened to the card? As what they had suggested, I left it on my office table. It made the office more cheerful, I have to say. It seemed to mark the table as mine, giving some sense of belonging. I enjoyed reading all the messages from friends and I really can't show them here as I thought maybe we should leave it as a privacy - something I know, you know and everyone else don't know - kind of thing. And they even printed out my photos, which really made me flashback to my three plus half year in NUS - as a student or a lab tech. The time that we had spent, were not nothing - they might not make it to the headline, but they are as important as anything could be, because you never know what will come your way if all these never happen.

As for the present, it was a French press for coffee and a packet of coffee powder. To be honest, I was awed. My first coffee was during my high school and I had since learned about coffee as in what's their content, how to roast the beans and how to prepare them. Though not explicitly trying to make my own coffee, I do have interest in it - who am I kidding? I have always had interest in many weird things. But my problem was, I only like certain coffee. Throw me thousands of packets of 3 in 1 coffee, I would leave them there to rot - I'm serious. So far, Starbucks and Coffee beans were still the normal ones I get to drink. And this present really gave me a new window, a coffee maker for me to make my own coffee. I did experiment on it a bit and learn here and there, hands on. I really appreciate this, really - and I realized my tea time was somehow shifted from tea-drinking to trying to French press my coffee. Oops, I should balance out my love then, ha!

All in all, I shall thank all these people, from the bottom of my heart. It's always funny to blog about my own birthday - doing my own birthday video. But I guess, it's the best respect I could give to these fellows who are so kind to me. Thank you everyone - for everything! :)

And here is a video of me the few minutes before my birthday... Enjoy!

Wetware: A computer in every living cell

2011-11-01T03:01:00.002Z

If anyone would want to find a book for some revision and knowledgeenforcement, I would recommend this – Wetware:A Computer in Every Living Cell by Dennis Bray. My first impression to thebook was of the simple and clear cut message, but it was more than just that.Bray had successfully transformed the very core of cell biology into passagesof easily-read chapters. He had started his book with a question to eitherhimself and his readers about the conscience of amoeba, on how a simple celllike that could survive, and live mechanism which could be mirrored on severalaspect in higher level organisms, for an instance the human!

Not only that I admire the way Bray supported each and every point ofhis with examples, which was an amazing piece for a Science person like me. Oneof the few which caught my attention wasStentor roeselii for its amazing mechanism as a single cell organism andthe Walter’s tortoise, which for a person like me had never heard of. Not onlydid Bray inserted biological examples with computational samples, his bookextended the understanding towards the living system to the aspect from Physicsand Chemistry such as using the chaotic system and diffusion kinetics. Digitalage had been devouring us so fast that all our generations think of computerswere laptops, droids and phones. Indeed, computer was more than that and hadcame a long way down the history, from something which we might not haverecognized at all. If you think this book were some introductory books forreally basic sciences, then again, you might not be overall-y right. Bray didslot in chapters based on specific cell biology such as mechanisms of enzymeslike glutamine synthase or nature of protein with its counterparts.

Last but not least, Bray had sent us his message of the title of thebook, by showing us one by one, step by step, how would cell be in comparisonto computers. Though, he did not give out a certain and definite answer, hedefinitely gave us evidences to support his idea and delivered the message,comparing cells and computers in many aspects. Reading this book does not onlygive us an insight of his idea, but open up our mind to more viable perceptionswhich we might have forgotten, ignored or even unknown of. To me, it serves asa good basic revision of what I have known of cell biology, but this time,reading it in a different style of language – one that many would understand. Enfin, I shall conclude that I enjoyedreading this book – a pleasure, I would say.

Tea Party (Not the Tea Party You Might Thought)

2011-10-26T08:19:00.001+01:00

Yes, Tea Party! This was taken when I went back for vacation as well. One thing I had always looked forward to when I get back home was to have tea. Tea time could be spend by having some tea at home, when Mummy will get us tea, or we create our own tea – and sometimes, this was accompanied by cookies or snacks. But of course, if you went for a tea house, it would be nice too! I particularly like it when there’s no one in the tea house because I will have the whole evening there, having tea and even cakes. Some do like scones but I’m not a huge fan of it. I preferred cakes, of course. Winter Warmer was one of the destination we would go if we wanted some tea or we just need a late lunch. The sandwiches there is superb and of course they have the environment – though it could be messy sometimes when it was peak hour…

Having tea was always there – but my observation towards teapots and teacups were a more recent activities – maybe around three years back. Some of the teacups were delicately designed to formed shapes as you pour in your tea, like the heart shape. Some teacups are simple with printed designs and some were really decorated. It’s interesting how much you could explore if you are really into Tea.

All in all, nothing beats drinking tea and having a good time with your family. Because other than treating your GIS with these food, you talked, joked, updated each other. You sit on comfortable chairs and started to look out into the sunny sky, feeling the relaxation. Sometimes, I would bring along a book or two and just spend time in there. It’s like in coffee shop, just that you are with the tea… And Papa and Mummy might exchange interesting news which could be really funny sometimes. Nowadays, when people started to have phones and droids and whatever, people tend to eat while facing their phone, pressing along the way. I think having tea this way, is really an art that not much people might find themselves have a chance. For that, I look forward to more tea the next time I return home.

For your information, I always wished I would one day have a sun room myself and have a tea…

Trying Something New in Sakae

2011-10-13T16:54:00.001+01:00

This is really something happened really, really long time back then. It was one of the holidays when I went back home. I don’t know why but going back home had been many times associated with food. And the food I mentioned, was not just local food but it does sometimes include many really nice food or even really bad food which we discovered together, as a family. I would say, having this meal in Sakae actually meant something to me.

My taste buds were always the one who lead the trend in the family. For example, we had our first taste of Pizza Hut when I was around six. At that time, the whole family did not like the taste except me, who gobbled the whole thing. The whole family didn’t step into that outlet since then, until when I was in secondary school and we started to accept the taste and even liked pizza. Same as that, my parents weren’t a great fan of Japanese and Korean food. And it was recently, with Korean dramas airing in the air, Mummy did tried Korean food and we had been visiting Korean cuisine outlet for some times. Sakae, for all this times, were the outlet I went with my friends or with my brother. I guess, partly due to her trying Japanese food after Korean, or partly because I went for study leaving her to accompany my brother to that outlet – the result now is that she actually eats Japanese food. And that’s when it’s not just these food, but also sushi. To think back, this actually made me thought of the evolution of the taste of the family along the time.

This photo was taken for the time when, yes you heard it right, my Mummy suggested to eat in Sakae. I was quite surprised as normally she wouldn’t suggest the place, even though she did eat there. I am very grateful as I take it as her wishing to let me eat something I like. This is very kind of her. As a matter of fact, the meal turned out to be another surprised as I don’t usually order sets like this (photo) because it is just quite expensive. Usually, I would just have a green tea and pick out some of the small dish of sushi to fill my tummy. Mummy then suggested why not I try the sets. I was, of course, delighted. I felt, all of sudden, being so touched and nothing could explain what I felt. The set is really a big portion. The taste is nonetheless good. Of course I wouldn’t know how does a original taste like, but this meal suits my taste. The soup, especially, is my favourite. Octopus is just not my cup of tea but the rest are really good!

To me, how does this meal taste is merely the surface meaning. What reminds me most, was how excited and grateful I was to this meal. I thank my parents for loving me so much!

Dragon-i with Family

2011-10-02T16:51:00.001+01:00

This is yet another trip with my family. This time, Pleasure was not here because he was busy doing something else (this sentence doesn't bring any meaning). The point is, we get to eat nice food! We went to Queensbay Mall and went to Dragon-i. I think we were late for lunch, that's why we never need to queue up for the seats. The place were quite busy though. We ordered Xiao Long Bao, of course and with other dishes. Mainly it was Mummy who ordered since I have no idea what to have except Xiao Long Bao, haha!

And this is the rather cold chicken. It's interestingly spiced up but too bad, due to its coldness, my parents were not too fond of it. They were just too used to warm Chinese food :)!

I had this dessert. I liked the coldness, but thing is I was too full at that time and I didn't manage to finish that item in the end. That's really sad...

The food here were quite nice and it looked rather good in environment as well. Though, if you prefer hawker and local cooked food, then there is a certain different between the both. I would say they held each's advantage. That's why, we as the consumer will get the best deal by getting to choose or alternate between different style of cooking...

House Rules by Jodi Picoult: Somehow Engaging

2011-09-21T10:23:00.000+01:00

Jodi Picoult had always had her own style of writing when it comes to delivering a message and story to her readers. This is so far my second time on her work, the first being My Sister's Keeper, and in my personal opinion, this would be a much better book which attracted me. I would say it might be influenced by my own personal interest in autism and Asperger's syndrome, as I had personal experience linked with it.

In House Rules, Jodi narrated the story of a boy with Asperger's being accused of murder over the death of a girl, who happened to be his social tutor. In between, readers could look through the eyes of different characters who were around the boy (Jacob, in this case). Not all of them knew him truly, some had bad impression on him; there were also some who believed he was innocent. Hence, it was really quite a good read on it as you could experience how different understanding on autism of different people showed, which was precisely what we needed to know about our society today regarding autism awareness. Of course, Jacob might not be anything the autistic child you saw at your place, because each autistic child will develop different trait. Even in autism itself, there are a wide spectrum of traits whereby Jacob fall under the Asperger's syndrome. As a general note, people with Asperger's would most likely develop a certain interest in a specific field and might even be excelling in it. In House Rules, Jacob was a boy who liked dinosaurs when he was young but as he stepped into his teens, he found extreme passion in forensic science. You might think what I had said so far did not say anything about house rules - yes. When the whole story unfold, you would realized it was all linked to house rules, the house rules Jacob's single mother set up to keep the family running after her husband left and with two sons, having one of them with Asperger's. Asperger's tend to follow rules being set for them and literal, and that's what Jacob did all along. Other than the focus on autism, we could see from different characters, on how they strived to live, no matter how life went by. For example, Jacob's mother who has to cope with all these, raising two sons alone, settling the court case, taking care of Jacob of his autistic habits and Theo, Jacob's brother, another teen whom needed to be cared. Theo, on the other hand, being a younger brother of Jacob, had to take care of his elder brother, out of irony. Due to complications, Emma, the mother, would sometimes cared Jacob and seemed to ignored Theo when it was not the actual case. I find it warm to see Theo being so understanding though with certain dissatisfactions sometimes. Jacob, though autistic, had his own thought and loved his mother and brother as much as them. It was just too hard for him to express it.

I should stop writing more as it will lead to me revealing spoilers which will kill your surprise. I believed there were times when we do share certain traits similar to them and I could truly felt it when Jacob was trying to do his best and yet no one understands him. In this world, we might be bearing a closely related functionals like DNAs, proteins and systems, but within these similarities, there was no doubt there were always difference - and I really understand the difference of social means. I get to realize my interpretation of how people socialize was so different, but no matter how, it will go through somehow, you just need to work hard. Readers, I highly recommend this book, really...

Transformation Going On

2011-08-30T04:50:00.001+01:00

If you are loading this page and you thought you were seeing some awkward patterns or design on the site, do not fear – it was perfectly okay. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I actually try to make a change to the blog except the one that change the background when Blogger changed its interface. That’s why, my blog was still running on old html system, which was quite lengthy, difficult to make edits but yet save and secure. So, the idea now is to make use of all the ready-made widgets and plugins while editing their source code to my preference. I am yet to come out with a complete plan of my site’s outlook, but I guess things will come up along the way. Though, do not worry as I will still post up new blog posts as I am actually already quite behind of the events going on. Have a nice day!

Family Meal with Pizza (Images are for Illustration Purposes Only)

2011-08-29T14:06:00.001+01:00

This was actually a meal when I went back last time. It had been so long since we actually do visit the Pizza Hut outlet because the food stalls around, not just traditional but new ones, were just mushrooming. Pizzas we consumed were normally those we ordered online or by phone due to reasons like too busy to go out, too lazy to go out or just plain hungry at the wrong time. So, when we decided to go for Pizza Hut, it was like ‘yay!’. And I actually looked at the menu as though I was some archaic individual. Well, the four of us were looking at the menu like aliens, because we usually ordered our familiar pizza and there were actually so many styles new now. Hence we tried to order this one with six types of cheese: Cheddar, Mozzarella, Parmesan, Provolone, Monterey Jack and Romano. And the product was not really as seen in the photo, hence the post title, haha!

Other than that, we do, of course, ordered some other pizzas and side dishes, which were really nice, especially when you are hungry!

The favourite of mine other than nice pizza was actually this, the chicken wing. Albeit the healthiness of this dish, the taste is really superb and nicely cooked.

But of course, their lasagne was not really very nicely done – or should I say, maybe is just that day or it’s because we take that dish last. Yups!

But overally, Pizza Hut is still serving as the place for family meals well .

Update of My Life

2011-08-22T17:15:00.001+01:00

Someone was knocking on heaven’s door, knock… knock… knock… - it was not heaven’s door, someone next door was knocking on the wall, just behind my seat, for the whole day – tick-tock-ing, reminding me the way time revolves just as we didn’t notice how it went by, silently yet with great prices. It was this that meant how much I had left out my blog. I tried to update stuff that happened around me, but there were too much of them and I was still compiling things like photos and read-ups so that I can make sure my posts are quality. As, that was actually my goal – to improve myself in all aspect. Back to the issue of posting, the last one which I updated about my current self, was about the day I’ve gotten my exam result for my last semester – pardon me while I show my shocked face and skip around the building. Back! Come on, I should summarize what had happened so far…

After the exam result was released, I graduated from NUS, attending the commencement on the 7th of July, 2011. Meanwhile, I followed the crowd in job hunting, searching for the job that suits me best. Lots of rejection, numerous of ignorance, several of ‘interesting’ event – and I was now having one job offer and will be going for it as a first try into the society. Though, before I was given a work permit, I am still jobless, technically. This is a period of my life when I seriously thought I was wasting my life away. It was moody at first but I was lucky, to have so many loved ones around me – giving me encouragement, advices, support – really thankful for all these. So, now things seemed to look positive. I take this as a time to outgrow myself from a routine school life, an improvement stage where I get to improve myself, either academically, spiritually, mentally, physically – my choose. So basically, my life was spent on learning how to connect with my friends, getting back my hobbies such as drawing and reading, doing some casual exercises and dance a little in my little room, read up materials of all type – from science to history, food to music – knowledge was not just about what our majors are. I took this advice from a sentence of Dr Fairey, great people of ancient times were experts in many fields – not specialists – and their greatness were remembered until now. But anyway, yes, I did loads of things as well, taking photos for art senses, writing, languages, exploring, helping friends on stuff, decorating my room… Life went on pretty fulfilling and I am still searching more ways to make my life more meaningful. I prepared myself mentally and went for Upheavel in Europe lecture, crashed another political science class and learned from different people. I guess, if you – I mean, YOU, who is reading this, is not doing all you can in your life – do that now! You will be surprised how much you could do.

And more recent one would be today’s medical check up, which lacked X-ray. I still can’t get pass sensory test without giggles and need to go back tomorrow for the X-ray. Other than that, Heather will be coming to Singapore for attachment and I will be welcoming her. It was actually great, to hear friends coming over. What’s more, there will be several events from CLHSSSA coming up. I’m looking forward to it, serious. And now – when I’m talking about quality postings, I’m now writing a structurally skewed post. But, all the same, it’s midnight and I’ve got to sleep and wake up early – Loads to do for the new day coming. So, see you guys!

Everything with Fries

2011-07-29T08:42:00.001+01:00

Talking about this, this was a meal eaten last year with a bunch of friends who wanted to taste different food. And we gathered here, at Holland Village. It was a filling meal, with me choosing sandwiches. To rate the sandwich, I would say, it’s a so-so, but I do like the fries. It was not as though they could fry the fries better than McDonald’s but the choices are many – in which I find myself fond of the sweet onion taste. Not bad, even everything else was bad in the shop, just the fries could easily fill your stomach.

The next one would be the variety of drinks. This required you to have really sweet teeth. A normal sweet teeth like me, could feel it is sweet, so you can guess how sweet was the drink. I had butterscotch milkshake, which was really nice. There are Nutella flavour and several others too. Definitely a good try!

Photo album available here.

A Day of 豆浆油条

2011-07-29T08:09:00.001+01:00

It was not an entirely a day with just You Zha Quey and Dau Zhui, rather a day I went for a stroll in one of the mall just to spend some time – some funny stuff. First was this very thing that obviously showed you what’s wrong with it…

Then it was these mugs. Look at their prints. There’s Mr Mao saying, “ Serve The People, Serve The World” and Obama saying, “ Change”. Though I could not deny there’s some political message here, but it was quite plain straight forward as the creator did chose the right symbol to convey the message…

Then another shop turned out to be selling these cute girly stuff with really strong fragrance. We spent quite a long time in it. I do like things inside: laces and smell and cute – but no thank you, my skin could not tolerate all laces. But in the end my Mum actually bought little cute teddy for me and my brother. We chose something like a graduation bear and Mum insisted I should get one with a laced white dress... So they now looked like a wedding bear couple than graduation…

The next thing was the meal we had. We came across this stall which was selling You Cha Kueh and stuff like these – but not at a roadside stall or wet market – but in one of the unit. I do miss eating these… We ordered almost everything available in that shop:

Of course we had coffee and you tiao, which is what we always had in the market. I always ate it sole without coffee until I start drinking coffee…

The result after the meal was staggering, look at this! It is literally EMPTIED. I guessed we were just too hungry. Though I would say these food at the market were still best, but the one in this outlet is less oilier or sweet, which is good in some way too…

Photo album here.

Beauty of Physika

2011-07-23T17:15:00.001+01:00

Happiness could be found by purely understanding the nature – physika of all things in the world.

Okay – it was actually all about electric cut out, on and off, for a few days. Something was wrong with the main power site and hence my house started to light up candles since it was just too wasteful to turn on the torch all the time. And after days when it was confirmed of no more power shutdown, we started to scrape off the wax, made by the candles and this one is from one decorative candles which initially had some fragrance but after almost ten years, it had left only with wax and thread.

As I took the piece off, I realized this pattern underneath and quickly understood from which way did the liquid wax landed. As this was not a direct candle wax drop, the wax actually flowed from the top to reach the base, not all in one go. Because of that, the wax gets to dry off layer by layer, one before the next wave of wax coming. Dew to this, we could see the uneven cooling of wax, which formed the patterns. If we were to collect more data, I’m sure we could actually determine the time difference between each flow of wax…

Maybe this does sound like a primary school science project, but I enjoyed discovering stuff like that. It is incredible how nature was made as it is – it’s something we should understand more!

The photos are stored here.

Plain Fan Transformation

2011-07-16T14:52:00.001+01:00

This topic actually arise from me finding an album of photo which I had not talked about in any of my previous blog post. And there was where I found photos of what I had done to the fan. Remember I mentioned about me buying a plain fan during my trip at Kek Lok Si?

I found a poem which would bring calm and peace, and with my surname on it. With that, I decided to put that on the fan. I even considered drawing on it but thought better of it. I should brush up my drawing skills before I spoiled the whole fan. It was not easy to get a plain fan after all…

So here it is, the result of me writing calligraphy on the fan and chopped my name using the jade stamp (which is now gone as it snapped into half soon after this).

Photos could be found here.

Happy 2011! (VERY Belated)

2011-07-13T19:38:00.001+01:00

Argh, see this post is like half a year late! But okay, just to share with you some pictures and also the event… Plus, as now is vacation, the feeling just the same, right? And this is actually a favourite of mine, to look at photos with family, sentimental…

This is the day when I ate more than one serving of crème caramel, greedy me!!! We had our lunch at the Rasa Sayang. Of course, it might not be the best hotel, but it is fair enough for a good lunch…

There were bread, cheese, food of different cuisine and many more…

Of course, after food, we had a walk around the place which brought us to take photos around!

I actually liked the serenity in within…

And of course, we took a look at the nice beaches which actually attracted me no matter how many times I went here. They are not really white sands, but they are white and nice enough. Though, it is quite hot under the sun and my feet will jump if I were to stand long enough on top of the sand. But nonetheless, I love playing with the sand which were soft…

And of course, the coast is beautiful, naturally…

And back to one discovery – we found this acorn-shaped lamps… hahaha!

It’s a good trip after all…

These are the links to albums of the photos taken from my camera and Pleasure’s.

Au Revoir, Les Enfants: Is there really a line?

2011-06-27T16:45:00.001+01:00

One thing that my friend could not understand about me is that I find real old movies and watch them. For example, I found a certain joy watching black and white film which my friends would kindly reject when I invited them (anyway, I invited them not because I think they will like it, I thought it would be polite to invite and that’s what friends did ). And to be true, I would be the one who reject black and white movie if it was ten years ago, until I found they were actually quite good. But don’t worry, this movie ‘Au revoir, les enfants’ is an old movie, but not black and white. I always wanted to watch it and thought of loading tudou until I found out that I could save all the problem and just watch it on youtube instead. Around thirteen parts there are, I watched and couldn’t help but like this movie.

It was in French and it was about a French boy who return to a Catholic school to find new students, which were actually Jews who were secretly hid by the Church from the occupying Nazis. The movie is rather moving as it depicts the psychology of the main character, a boy who got jealous for the new boy who was talented and was seen by the teacher as brilliant. When he found out the boy was praying Hebrew at night with candles, not receiving during communion and found his original Jewish name from the locker, he was in a confusion. He could easily turn them in, but something was holding him back. This ‘love-hate’ relationship had slowly developed into friendship, which will end very soon. The Jewish boy, who felt the difference of religion, was undergoing confusion of faith as well. However, things changed very soon when the Nazis came to check again and again until one day, the Father was arrested and forced to hand in the sets of Jewish boy to the regime. As the others wave the boys goodbye, the Father says, ‘I’ll see you soon’. Jullien, the main character, realized this will be the last time he will ever see his friends again as the boys were recorded to have died in concentration camp later…

One of the quote which I found the feeling is so immense:

Julien Quentin: T'as peur?
Jean Bonnet: Tout le temps.

And a very deep ending:

C'était il y a plus de 40 ans, mais je me rappelle chaque seconde de ce matin de janvier 1944

translated as:

More than forty years have passed, but I'll remember every second of that January morning until the day I die.

30th May - A Day

2011-06-07T09:57:00.001+01:00

Just last week, something happened, just like what the classmates said during a class dinner, ‘I heard something is going to happen on 30th the May’. Yes, that very day was the final exam release date. Actually, given that I am pretty sure I will have to graduate this semester, I thought I would not care any bit of this exam result release – but I ended up with a whole hybrids of emotions. Of course, I did not feel that way for no reason, I was worrying what if I failed one of the core module and was forced to extend my study with no honours in exchange. I was literally rolling in my bed worrying about that until I was tired and went into sleep – which was awakened by my Singapore phone message. I was actually wondering who were to message me at this hour (it’s around 8 and it came Bazinga!) and thought of ignoring it and go back to sleep when I realized it was not Malaysia phone. I hopped out of my bed to look at some weird numbers and opened the very message which shook my morning – my exam result.

Flashing on my mobile screen, was a result I had never had before in my undergraduate life, my first A and one without any C or D. Though, I should feel shameful for the A came not from my major course, but minor – the European History. Basically, I get an A for Why History, B+ for Mediterranean History, B for Cold War, another B for UROPS project and a B- for Immunology. Each had surprised me. I may not have mentioned here in my blog about it but I had done terribly bad for my CA in Immunology, 76 at the last bar of the class – and that’s why I had thought I might have the chance of failing it. So, turned out the 70% finals did gave me a second chance to pull that low marks up. I could still remember how I was frowning at the 76 as the very minority in class who was placed beneath of the whole class… In fact, even after I pulled a mark that is supposed to be underneath a class to become a B-, I shall say proudly that I must have done a pretty good job for my finals although I have to admit I left out a lot of things and I was quite nervous due to several things I find others were so familiar yet not me. Another surprise came from Mediterranean. My midterm was a great failure – at least for a course which I studies a lot. I got a below average at 56 when the average is 65 and the teacher was commenting about he’s sure I feel disappointed with that. Truly speaking, I do feel disappointment but that’s not really a big deal – what’s life without a few dragons? It was the fact that even at that time, I was still very confused of what I am learning and what is the focus of the course when it was already half a semester, with all the things coming in – it was quite depressing at times. But, to see a B+ as the final result is already great for me, seriously. Nonetheless, I am very happy to see I improved from getting a C for a Level 3000 History module last semester to a B this semester, which is really a good thing – I do believe part of the C came from my blindness in document analysis which I learned a lot from, so, no offence. And my UROPS project, it is really not quite what I thought. For all the effort and tough things, I would proudly say I deserved something better that B. But for all the malfunctioning and experience, I would say B means nothing else as what I had got from this module, is far more than just a grade. Like what I have said, it’s just like a Sale 3-in-1 package, it might not contain everything you want, but you get what is needed inside.

And now, I can repeatedly answer the question people asked: If you were to relive your life in undergraduate, how will it be? I would say, it will stay the same. Of course, in mind, I would say I wish my results are better, I wish I could do honours, I wish I could learn more – but then, it might not mean how much I had got now. If I had been study hard enough, I might get all the As, but I might not have known so many people and learned so many things outside the classroom; if I had been caring to do my honours so much and given a choice, I might not have considered doing my European Studies minor, which led me to overcome my old enemy; if I had let myself to play more to live the life, I might not have enjoyed learning so much – and of course, all these possibility could be the other way round! So, back to reality, I am grateful of what I have been through and have no regrets for it… Hence, there you go, my result which I was so happy with, ehem – some people might think my result slip was one which no one would really looked up with, but it meant something to me. And of course, I was hopping on my parents’ bed as though it was Christmas and yelling about my result. My parents were happy for me, although my Mummy replied ‘If you had studied like that every semester, you would have gone for honours’ and my Papa was saying ‘Really ar? They send to your phone ar?’ still stunned with my result. But anyway, Happy Holiday and shall prepare for graduation !

Rien À Déclarer: Vraiment?

2011-06-02T06:23:00.001+01:00

How exactly I came across this movie is still a mystery – if not wrong, it would be the trailer posted by someone on Facebook which summoned my attention with its humour. First, it was the very thing that I remembered my teacher said about relationship between countries. The French don’t really like Belgians. And this reminded me of how my history teacher said about the Brits and the French don’t really like each other – one thing clearly prove this was the Brits never really learn French and and the French don’t really learn English either. That is funny because it was quite true, haha! In this movie we saw the conflict between the two which happened around two custom officers at the France-Belgium border. Of course, you get to hear difference accent of French, which is a bonus. The two offices were having ‘hot and cold’ war all the time for little things, mainly based of mistrust. And in this movie, the relationship between two became better thanks to some mobsters. In process, the two very character which had conflicts and another one who tried to hide his relationship with another’s sister were put together on a scheme to improve the relationship between the two offices. Of course, there were many moments which is worth laughing when they were working together. This movie: a good laugh, simple plot and nice watch ! I think everything is clear by watching the bande-annonce:

Where the Wild Things Are

2011-05-23T17:17:00.001+01:00

This movie had been on my movie list for a very long time, for reasons that I might have forgotten. From what I know, my parents would not want to watch this with me as this is what they called ‘children’s movie’ – so, whatever. Truly speaking, this is a movie where you will understand a lot of it if you are a child as a lot of the stories were what the grownups would feel pointless or doesn’t make sense. It shows the main character, being a boy who feels neglected by his mother and his sibling, when his mother was actually having a hard time coping with her own problem. Of course, as a child, we were always not that sensitive towards what problem else could bother one so much. The grownups would have seen his tantrums as inconsiderate and childish, but when you are a child, you don’t understand. I could still remember how I was interrupting my mother’s conversation with others in the hope of getting her distracted so that I could eat the ice cream or chocolate in the fridge. The boy went on a journey, the day he ran away from home – and met monsters, which in the process taught him to look at how to feel for others, compromise and everything. In some sense, it is a journey for him to learn to become a growing kid.

Technically speaking, there’s not much action or magic to expect from this movie. The essence, lies in the content. That reminds me, I should find some time to read the novel where this plot is based upon, by the same name…

Tuesdays with Morrie: Something that Touches Me

2011-05-20T15:07:00.001+01:00

I saw this book in bookstore, for many many times. But, I never thought of setting my eyes on it. And near the end of the semester, I get to talk with many people, listening as they told me about how they look at their life in the process of sharing them for my future. Some of them had really interesting life and I appreciate how they are willing to share it with me. I would say, I have no idea since when, people find their ways, intentionally or unintentionally, to tell me things. In process, I find myself keeping secrets of many, giving advice to some when me myself might not even experienced what they had – but at the same time, feeling lucky to have the opportunity to share what they have and to look at things in a very different way. As I went through all these, I started to learn how to keep their information confidential and transform the message in another way to be a mirror to others. And one day, when I was telling my roomie on how she could look at future in another way by giving some examples my professor shared with me, she thought I was telling her fairy tales. After times of assuring her I am telling the truth, she told me she thought I was joking because my encounters were so similar of this (the book). Hence, I added it into my reading list and finished it days ago. It was, indeed, a good read – one that touches my heart, and I truly get what my roomie said.

Yes, just like Mitch, I am so lucky to meet some professors who are willing to give me lessons on life – though not as personal as that. I learned how to treasure a good teacher, after I lose one – one that is quite imminent in my life, the one that gave me my dream as a scientist. I was young at the age of 9, and I did not thought of saying ‘thank you’ to her. I thought I will thank her when I succeed in achieving the dream she gave me, but within months, she disappeared and succumbed to breast cancer. I thought it was okay as I was young, but just as Adolf Hitler’s personal private secretary, Traudl Junge, said ‘Youth is not an excuse for ignorance’, it was – not an excuse, but a lesson to me. This was when I realized some things could not wait. This feeling became exceptionally strong this passed academic year, when I was again, showered with luck of meeting some amazing teachers. But this time, I told myself – never wait. And I am relieved I did thank them, all the time – remembering them. This is how Mitch did. He had almost forgot his teacher, blurred by all those colourful attraction of the real world – forgetting many lessons. When one day, he accidentally heard of his teacher getting ALS – he decided to go back and visit – and that led him to a series of lesson, which enabled him to look at the world differently. The teacher, Morrie Schwartz, gave him ‘lesson’ every Tuesday and in the end, died of his disease – but leaving imprint on his student, Morrie.

I did not spend specifically Tuesday with my professors, I did not spend a specific days with them; but it was already a blessing, to learn from them. Since it was Teachers’ Day, days ago this week, I wish all teachers ‘Happy Teachers’ Day’. Teachers, are those who teach – regardless as an occupation or as a person who teach you. This books is short but nice to read, seriously.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: An Irony

2011-05-20T10:42:00.001+01:00

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a movie which I noticed the ‘pajamas’ not spelled as ‘pyjamas’. If you were to expect any brutal killing or action such as escaping a bomb explosion, tell you what, keep you expectations away. This movie provides another way of looking at the Nazi nationalist propaganda, from the eyes of a child, who see things, at times, more detailed and reasonable than grownups. Besides the movie sees the breakdown of a family as they try to strive through the Nazi regime.

The plot delineated a German family of an SS officer moving to a new location – a new house due to the officer’s transfer to take charge on a ‘labour camp’. The son, Bruno, was upset at first about leaving his friends but as soon as he reached the new house, his curiosity led him towards the backyard and the ‘labour camp’ which he was warned not to go. There, he met Schmuel, one of the prisoner of his age sitting behind a pile. Friendship slowly developed between the two as they see no difference between them and Bruno would sneak food and games over just to spend time with his friend. At home, Bruno and his sister were assigned a tutor, who was actually teaching them by instilling nationalist propaganda. Bruno’s sister was influenced and was very into the propaganda and the ideal of Germans, pasting Nazi posters and even looking up to SS officers. Bruno, on the other hand, observed several contradiction between the beautified ideals of German nationalism and what he saw around – which includes how the Jews in his house was not as bad as described, how it was the Germans who used violence. His mother, upon finding out the labour camp was actually an extermination camp after sawing the black smoke, went into a depraved period of psychological breakdown. The quote ‘We were not supposed to be friends, we were supposed to be enemies’ showed the scene of confusion within Bruno. With a child’s view, it is difficult for him to understand why is there a difference between them. Bruno looked up to his father but at the same time questioned what he did. Once, he saw his father sharing with the other officers, the demoniac nationalist project, a hoax ‘Theresienstadt’ in a room, which showed the camp as a camp giving opportunity and good to the Jews. Believing the film, Bruno was relieved on how great his father had been and ran over to hug him.

However, upon his mother’s worsen condition, his father reckoned it would be best to let the family to stay elsewhere. One day before the date, Bruno went to find Schmuel, who was beaten after Bruno wronged him to avoid punishment. Schmuel’s Pa disappeared. To make up his wrongdoing previously, Bruno decided to sneak into the camp and help him. At the same time, Bruno was excited to experience what he saw on Theresienstadt himself. On that very same day, the SS officer, particularly Bruno’s father, decided to increase the inmates being gassed. Hence, when Bruno dug a hole and went into the camp, in the process, Bruno and Schmuel were sent to the ‘shower room’. Realizing Bruno’s disappearance, the family realized where Bruno had went and ran to seek him. Bruno, however, did not escape the fate, but to hold hands with Schmuel as they were waiting what they feared. The officers poured in the infamous Zyklon B, gassing the chamber. The scene left with the quietened shower room, indicating death of the whole chamber of inmates, including Bruno. His father, was left in the rain, realizing what had happened. The family members, grieved.

Looking at this movie, one might tell the irony of what the father did had actually became the cause of his son’s death. But what else do we saw? We saw in different aspect, how life changes as they reeled around the Nationalist programme. At the same time, one would say, if the family members were influenced enough by the propaganda – wouldn’t this event showed how a Jew could lure the German into death? Is this a conspiracy? This, would led into a real thought on how one shall interpret the message. Of course, generally, we would – look at the bright side, but wouldn’t it be interesting just to look at it from a completely different perspective?

Stalingrad: There’s No Victor in War

2011-05-18T18:58:00.001+01:00

Watched this movie while taking breaks from study. Stalingrad, showed us one very lesson we always tell ourselves but serious, how many of us really learn from it? There is, as we always said, no victor in any war. This could be seen in Stalingrad where the setting was on Stalingrad itself, when the Nazi Germans were fighting at the eastern front with the Soviets.

The movie started with the German soldiers enjoying their ‘vacation’ in Italy, having their time before some were called upon assembly to fight at the eastern front. At first, things looked cheerful for them until the battle went on and on. They did occupied buildings but with heavy casualties. In between the movie showed how much the soldiers who had been victorious in their previous battle witnessed and undergone real psychological impact as their comrades were dying, injured or due to the stressful battling survival. In between they learnt something more important than just winning the battle. The buildings were surrounded by the Soviets. In another way, both sides were losing much to casualties. The movie plot was mixed in with several little stories about a forced-prostitute and a young Russian.

Not sure I would want to share all the stories here but this movie had definitely brought me towards the mental of war – the reality. When the commander-in-chiefs were moving their little chess pieces in their headquarters, had they thought of the lives on it? At the same time, even when they do thought about the live, are they supposed to care about the live or the country? Sometimes, it is just not the case of choosing both – but one out of two… And this movie really showed many things that might had been overshadowed about war. If you are into these topics, I recommend you this!

Welcoming HTC Wildfire

2011-05-18T17:50:00.001+01:00

Well, unlike my last phone, this time, my old phone is not going into retirement – and I shall remind myself of this point. I have no idea why, but my feelings towards my phone had increased across from c380 to Razr v3xx – both of Motorola. But what I can’t control is how the phone would work for me. As how Sheldon Cooper must have said ‘work FOR me’. Instead of really solving my problems, Razr v3xx had not been fulfilling its responsibilities very well. It usually went to low battery when I need an emergency call or it shuts itself down whenever I need to check something. It had been like that since years and at first it was about the batteries. Believe it or not, I changed the battery twice and before school ends, it totally shuts down on me and I have to go all the way to Sim Lim Square to get a battery for it. So in total, it had left me spending on three batteries and one which actually costs 38 SD! And anyway, it did not turn out well even after I changed the battery…

The weird thing is, the moment I touch down on PIA, it turned out to work well. So I just assume it really gets a little homesick and will hence won’t blame much on it. But for safety purposes, my parents and I reckon it would be better for me to get a safe phone in case I need to call or text in emergency. And this is just around the 3rd anniversary of this second Motorola phone when I get myself a new phone: HTC Wildfire at RM999 – by far the most expensive phone I have. Anyway, I do hope it will work okay and I will find a way not to abandon my Razr V3xx – after all, it is a similar phone with someone I know – just by looking at the phone, it reminds me of something more than a phone see…

And here is one of the photo I found on the net about this new phone of mine – quite beautiful, I would say – and for once, I am not getting Motorola…

Happy Wesak!

2011-05-17T12:18:00.001+01:00

Hello world, Happy Wesak Day to you all! Today, as what I had taken from the temple I went this morning showed, is the day we celebrated the day of birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. Made myself a half-day vegan and went to temple just now. May today be one of the day you will be enlightened as well .

Indian Food in Science Park?!

2011-05-17T09:22:00.001+01:00

Okay, this actually happened months ago before Sebastian left Singapore for Penang before heading back to Germany. Plus, this lunch was not planned by me (it was Elaine I think) and I was just happened to tag along for food hunting in the midst of school time. And when I heard it would be a walking distance from school in Science Park, my eyes twinkled! What else can we ask for? And it appeared to be a really nice one indeed, not only the environment (which were some aroma that really make me sneeze) and also the food. Satisfying lunch, I would say.

Before the main course, we were served this as appetizer, Masala Poppadom which was recommended. We were given two sauce to eat it with and the crisp was served with spices, onions and garlics – that is really very appetizing:

For main course, we had different types of curry (mutton, chicken and vegetable). These were really good – at least they ARE curry, compared to those sold in somewhere else…:

And to eat with the curry, of course, we get ourselves a basket of nan of different style. These were good as they are warm and nice – and they go nicely with the curry!

After the bread, we had dessert. I had Badam Kheer, the milky thing with rice and almond while one of us had Gajar Halwa, which is carrot, milk and almond. I like Badam Kheer!

Okay, so finally we took a photo together outside the restaurant which has quite a number of decoration to show how much the food is like. The food is nice, I wouldn’t mind to visit it again for another go, seriously.

Life is Wonderful

2011-05-14T18:52:00.001+01:00

After the woeful and negative viewpoint of my life at current state, of course, I do realize life was not that bad after all. Things started to get better around Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. What actually happened was quite a bit of drama. I left the house on Monday, for school, in a rather tired mind. First night in new house was hot, sweaty and uneasy – I don’t think I actually slept, or rather, rest my mind. I took the direct bus to school to receive message from my ex-roomate about returning transponders to the office. And yes, I have to return the keys, collect a letter and clear everything I have in the room. It was tiring and finally got to rest in Sharlene’s room by getting a full blast of her cooler while she was reading Silence of the Lambs. For a person who spent most of her time reading medical texts, that is a rare occasion. But anyway, I get to use her laptop to check the location and route to my class dinner and set off while I received a message…

It was 9th of May and Ages of the Mediterranean class had a class dinner organized by our teacher (or professor, if that’s what you call), Dr Fairey. And one of the classmates whom my friend introduced me messaged me to ask if I am going so that we could go together. Alright, since I am not sure where on earth is that place, I said why not. Of everything about reaching punctual and departing early – we were stuck in traffic jams, both train and bus. I met her at Outram Park MRT and took a bus to that place. We asked around, which is so coherent to what I had been doing every time I walk out of NUS. This is a very ‘good’ example of life sciences student life – because you basically contributed your life to life sciences – and you don’t really step out of academic life without any urgent matters. Anyway, lucky that I had done all the scouting activities back in school that I get to spot the place all right. And the first thing I saw when I reached the piazza, I was as though entering somewhere like paradise. Seriously, I would give anything just to spend a whole day here – what’s more when you are living like hell back at the new house?! That’s when I decided to stay as long as I can no matter how. The thing is to find that one small Cappadocia restaurant was not an easy task. In the end it was the friend, whom obviously was a Fairey fangirl, spotted her idol. We walked over and it did not take me long to decide calling her a fangirl since she was so excited with the appearance of her idol, plus all the excitement and ‘cute-describing’ over the journey, and also her reaction talking – these were overwhelming. I had never seen real fangirl in my life – but hers is quite extraordinary overwhelming, haha – should I feel lucky to meet such a person? Anyway, just by looking how people fangirling had done quite something to make me feel lighter after days of dreading in the hell-like house. Things just get better as the dinner started. We get to learn new things, and my symposium group mate joined in and we get to talk all sort of things. Well, of course, some of the topic was not very concerned to me due to them as a whole table of locals – but still, I enjoyed the night. Just to think how I was tied back to Singapore due to bond and financial limit did made me sigh sometimes, but I am sure I am not a person who will be limited by all these – so it would just be a temporary thing.

Anyway, we ended up the day at around 1 am, which is when I received call from my house mate about the Internet is up – and yes, at least I can get my air ticket back from house. Ever since I started to feel so sad about the sad state of the house, I don’t see a purpose of staying back on this lonely island with nothing to do. I did plan to visit interesting historical places in Singapore, take a ride of the legendary train from the station which will be closed down soon, and part of me wished to stay to enjoy the very last moment of my undergraduate life – but meaningless life had really beaten all these – letting me to wish to go home as soon as possible. Anyway, back to the dinner. We ended up forming groups according to staying area to save the taxi fare. Of course, due to my bad Singapore geography knowledge, I just say my address and those people would put me in the right group, ha! Anyway, I ended up with the teacher. I feel so sorry for him if he is not willing to share a cab but since it is set, we just follow suit then. After ensuring all students were on their way back – which included one solidarity girl as I have no idea where she actually stay until no one is with her, we flagged a cab and took the ride back. I won’t say in details about these but what happened next when I reached the house was Singtel was not working! I was trying to call my parents on the issue of going home. I only get through at around two plus and I just decided to buy a ticket which was ridiculously cheaper on Wednesday, don’t ask me why – it just happened to be cheaper that day. Just like my friend laughed at me on msn ‘You are going home tomorrow?!!!’ Haha, yes, booked a ticket right slightly more than 24 hours beforehand and the next day I need to go back hall to collect all my stuff back to this house, pass up the recommendation letter, return all my library books, check out my academic robe size, print out my boarding pass, get furniture for my house and pack! This is way crazier than anything. But the feeling was not as despairing as I thought! With a nice evening spent with really good chat with people, particularly the teacher, and a plan to go home right 24 hours later – things just looked so good no matter how bad they are!

So the following hours, after a short nap – I started my marathon of to-do list, which is, again, limited by travelling time. Anyway, I succeeded in finishing all these and ended up packing back in house at night while enjoying my new table and chair! I get a good dinner that night and On Wednesday, I spent my day in Changi – waiting to go home! Seriously, things just feel like getting better. Of course, I do miss school and wished I can do something about improving my knowledge, especially in terms of research – but at the meantime, looks like I need to be patient and relax while having my vacation and wait for my call…

Free Falling Week

2011-05-13T18:02:00.001+01:00

Why free fall? Because my life the previous week was almost like that. Falling down without weight and no resistance? Sort of. If any of you who really listen to me talking to myself, you would have heard me, “Mafer, you had a bad bad week, but no matter, you must undergo these in your life”. As a matter of fact, my life last week was not as tragic as someone fallen sick or I received some really bad news – it was just a turn in my life.

Last Sunday, was supposed to be the last day I am allowed to stay in hall. And there goes my life as a university undergraduate student. Stop being an undergraduate student, stop staying in hall, step into the world of graduation and a real Singapore life – all at the same time. You might think it is a small matter, but to think of all the changes that could happen at the moment happening at the same time hit hard on me. Shifting into new house did not help the situation at all. The house is okay, everything sounds alright and wonderful – but is it? I am to shift to somewhere middle of nowhere, where I need to take an hour bus ride to reach from school, equal long time by train and I would never consider walking there. The nearest and only food stall which sells not more than five variety of food is situated five to ten minutes walk from my house. And wait, when I say it as a house – it is not even a house! It is a HDB, the one that looked square-ish and you don’t really have a roof on top of you. Yes, and the best way to settle your grocery was to take LRT to the nearest mall, which really contain only the most common necessaries. The whole flat did not have any fan and the weather is really depressing. The old cooler I owned barely can reduce the heat by so few at a very limited area. At first, there was not enough furniture for a comfortable living and no Internet to use on. As a summary, the flat is not giving me any home feeling at all. At least now, I realized hall had been playing its role as the home away from home very well.

A sudden stop of life without coursework and exams had really halted my life. I am busy with all the shifting and adapting but it did not really feed my soul. I feel a sudden emptiness. And this actually made the home-less feeling worse. Plus, all I do everyday was correcting and refining my resume and cover letter, sending emails and this was not helped by a rare occasion of reply. Perhaps, it is rare for your employer to reply email unless you are confirmed for interview, but it was nonetheless depressing at times. Yes, the week did not really sounded as though I was caught in a natural disaster or war – but it did feels like a sudden rejection of the previous life… Shall stop and start to talk about something following that in the next post…

P.S. This post sounded like a total crap and rambling – just a collection of feelings unarranged…

Joyeux Noël: A Warm History

2011-05-10T11:33:00.001+01:00

Right after exam, the desire of watching movie did lurk into my soul and I can’t decide what to watch as I had forgot where did I put my movie list. After checking for some interesting war movie, I remembered about this very movie which I thought of French, history and Christmas: Joyeux Noël. It is based on a true story which happened on 24th December 1914, known as the Christmas Truce during the WWI. Of course, the movie posters did transfer the message quite clearly by displaying the shake of hands and also the leaders of the three regimens of different countries (Scottish, French and German) walking together.

The opening part of the movie had made a very interesting entrance by having three different kids speaking English, French and German, giving speech on their passion towards their own countries and at the same time the distrust of their condemned enemies, showing how mentality of the human had been during that time period, giving a deeper insight of the society of the days. I had posted about that previously and you can refer here.

The movie mixed in with some personal portrayal of certain characters to give more detail upon how the history develops along the line. However, we could see the white feather generation mentality which was portrayed by youngsters who looked at war as an event to prove themselves. Besides, there is a certain people who really thought war will eventually end by Christmas. So when the Great War continued, it was clearly not a short war. Of course, we could, again, see the difference between technologies of the three. While the Germans were using tanks and better guns, the French were obviously lagging behind by still using the old-fashioned gun with knife in front (what is it called?). And yes, this had shown how much advantage the Germans were. However, no matter how much you are better equipped in a battlefield, there is no doubt casualties were inevitable. This occurred to all divisions and this movie focused on the three which met each other face to face in the no man’s land around Alsace. On the eve of Christmas, however, history unfolded into a warm episode when music had actually melted the situation where they decided on a temporary cease-fire just for Christmas eve. Eventually it ended up with merry and warm Christmas eve, not only with exchange of information but also people stayed together despite religion difference. On Christmas day, they decided to bury all the dead by ‘burying the dead on the day Christ reborn’. The story developed into warm chapters, which would be too long to be explained here. Of course, a lot of things were not understood by third party, which was what happened to them. Their ‘bosses’, of course, did not tolerate with their ‘friendship with the enemy’. However, it is quite a deep insight when the French division leader told his father that he has become a grandfather by knowing from the Germans who occupied French zone that his wife gave birth to a boy. Many of them were then transferred. Some were brainwashed by biased religion leaders to fight and kill. In the very end, before they were transferred, they sang ‘I’m dreaming of home’ which really depicted the emotion of that time…

Frankly speaking, this is a movie about a very short history and may not contain high quality actions – but you could feel a lot by watching it, a good one to plunge yourself into history…

Greek Education: An Understanding

2011-05-06T18:21:00.001+01:00

One of the most thrilling experience about taking Ages of the Mediterranean course with Dr Fairey is the opportunity to explore a field which is one of my interest (whoops, I realized I have so many different interest and just saying ‘my interest’ had become nothing more than ‘something I like to do’). Anyway, yes, I get to deepen my understanding towards art. Seriously, I like drawing, I enjoy doing it and I know I can – but I am very bad at theory. Just look at the disproportioned grades I got for practical and theory for arts in school! But in this course, I get to understand them through the perspective of history and also increase my intuition towards art. Hence, now at least I know more about it and I drew this out, muahaha!

Greek Education by ~mafer-seow-wayn on deviant ART

Anyway, it is named as Greek Education with an emphasis of my feeling of the joy of one’s experience by learning and also teaching. Notice the right hand of the left most person, it is an inspiration of Socrates in one of the painting I saw. The position of the two listener were positioned to showed different style of learning, showing the various way one could learn. The person lecturing was depicted to show a satisfaction in telling what was in his mind. The insight is something like that, feel free to feel your way through the drawing, .

Warmonger Poems

2011-05-05T18:12:00.001+01:00

This is the opening of the movie of ‘Joyeuc Noel’ and it really touches the heart to understand how history unfolds from that period of time…

French kid:

Enfant, regarde sur ces cartes
Ce point noir qu'il faut effacer
Des tes petits doigts tu l'écartes
En rouge. Il vaut mieux le tracer
Plus tard. Quoique le sort te fasse
Promets moi bien d'aller là bas
Chercher les enfants de l'Alsace
Qui nous tendent leurs petits bras
Puisse en notre chère France
Les rameaux vert de l'espérance
Fleurir par toi, ô cher enfant
Grandis, Grandis. La France attend.

English kid:

To rid the map of every trace
Of Germany and of the Hun
We must exterminate that race
We must not leave a single one
Heed not their children's cries
Best slay all now, the women, too
Or else someday again they'll rise
Which if they're dead,
they cannot do.

German kid:

Ein Feind ist uns'rer, und einer allein.
Schon meisselt er Deutschlands Grabesstein.
Voller Hass ist sein Busen, voller Neid und voll Pein.
Ein Feind ist uns'rer, und einer allein.
Nun hebt der Frevler die meuchelnde Hand.
Sein Name, du kennst ihn, ist England.

L'hymne des fraternises : “I'm dreaming of home”

2011-05-05T07:35:00.001+01:00

Watched Joyeux Noel and this song struck me – peace yet suits in the emotion of the movie, nice!

Lyrics:

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

Drawing Cloth

2011-05-05T03:08:00.001+01:00

Fluidity of Cloth by ~mafer-seow-wayn on deviant ART

After looking at so many nice paintings and the fluidity of cloth in these masterpiece did not fail to awe me. And it is one of my skill weakness in producing such natural in my drawing! Hence, I decide to start pay attention in terms of the life in cloth, to bring out its nature, displaying it to its best. The first thing I need to do is to experiment, try and practice, of course – and here is one practice i made. It is a very random part of cloth though…

Ending 3rd Year 2nd Semester Officially

2011-05-04T04:38:00.001+01:00

As any semester before this, I am now ending my 3rd year 2nd semester of my undergraduate course officially. This, however, is the last semester for this degree and you will have to wait until I attain another degree course to see another post like this.

When I say this semester, my schedule is perfectly normal, it meant I have five modules. But as you look into it, you would have wondered why am I taking so many EU-coded modules rather than LSM-coded. The truth is, thanks to DBS who changed the syllabus days before my final exam last semester, I only need to take one more Life Sciences course and two European Studies. But I ended up doing something else, as you see… Since Life Sciences is my major, I shall start with Life Sciences modules and follow up with my minor, European Studies modules.

LSM3223 Immunology

Now, about this module, I would say I enjoyed it a lot. I am not sure if it is because I know I might not have any chance of studying Immunology in year 4 that I precious this very ‘last lecture’ myself, or I really like it – I would suggest it is a mix. The module taught us on immune response on its process, effects and study of few examples. The whole course is not very heavy but yet not as simple as one thought. I have to admit I might not be doing very well in the test as test were just about how much you are better than others – but I am proud to acknowledge that I understand everything I answered and I know what I am learning! I enjoyed the class not only on its content, but I actually find back the interest of curiosity towards the subject as how I first get in touch with Science. For those who wanted to take this module but fear it to be a boring subject, it is not a dry subject after all! Do not fear if you wish to enjoy the process of learning . The professors were really brilliant, not as though they could make the whole lecture theatre burst into laughter, but I know their effort in giving lecture with such compact content in such a short period should not be forgotten. Plus, they managed to deliver the message clear and straight, which is a great help to students who is bombarded with such a packed learning schedule. And therefore, we could use the extra time to learn more things outside the lecture, which will in turn helped in my understanding towards the subject. One flaw in this module would be the practical which was simply too few yet not well arranged as we were changing TAs and given TAs which had no idea what they were teaching as well. More often, we ended up discussing and teaching each other among students rather than asking the TA. Some professor reckon the problem and did roam around our bench more often to check on us, but life could be better if the TA was as enthusiastic as us… Of course, don’t get me wrong, the professors are not as strictly-teaching professor type, we did have several funny occasions, one including a professor who entered the wrong lecture theatre and nearly started talking about immunology to a bunch of chemistry student while we were waiting bluntly for his arrival somewhere.

LSM3288 & LSM3289 Advanced UROPS in Life Sciences I & II

Hoho, THIS! THIS is a long story, of course – covering what I had done since last semester. However, I should say, UROPS is just like your life – it has all the emotions, yet when you are finish with it, each moment make you miss them . Of course, every student who took this will have different project and supervisor. My project is Expression and Characterization of Novel Toxin Protein from Snake Venom. Due to research etiquette, forgive me for not be able to openly state exact details or publish any document about it. However, to summarize, I am dealing with snake venom protein which I performed protein expression, optimization, purification, refolding and in-vivo toxicity study. From this, I get to learn many things which included techniques such as Ni-NTA, ESI-MS (which is said to be a rare opportunity ), RP-HPLC and also many manual experiments. My project stopped at testing the protein on mouse by injection, which gave the opportunity to look at a real animal lab instead of the animal garden I had in secondary and high school. I like this project because I really is learning and I can feel myself growing a lot! Yes, I don’t have a mentor who will ‘hold’ my hand and guide me each step I walk, it is frustrating for a lost student like us – but I supposed this is a trust everyone able to give us, to learn independently. And I should say I grew a long way out of this. It is not just about finding journals or surfing net for information, it is about designing your experiment and also the courage of asking around. After so many years of studying, asking had became so rare in our life when all we could find is already in books or on the net – and this is when I have to find back the true me who keep on wondering about life, questioning the truth. I am very thankful for given such an opportunity to learn, truly. Other than that, working in a lab and near so many scientists, I understand more about Science and its career – etiquette, spirit, politics and so on. There were positive stuff but there were negative ones as well, but no matter how, I am glad I am given a chance to look into all these at such a stage. Nonetheless, it is in this module which I truly realized grades are really not that important after all. When it comes to research, what we needed was not how much and how well you could write in two hours in the exam hall – it requires more than just that to strive through your research career. And I am grateful when I am down, bogged down by certain obstacles, it was a lecture in Why History which led me to see the whole thing differently. Not only that, to realize Chain was actually working on snake venom before working on penicillin seemed to make me cheer up a bit, haha! Of course, Norman Heatley’s spirit will always be with me, thanks to Dr Murfett who introduced such a great figure to our class – Heatley is in my ‘hero’ list now! All in all, I do wish I will continue my passion towards research from this and not just stop here. We will see how my future unfold then…

EU 2219 Why History? The 20th Century, 1914-1989

Seriously, my impression towards this module before I take it is just so bad – and of course, it is not now! After two interesting European History class experiences, I decided to plunge myself into history just for the sake of my late-blooming interest. And I need two more EU modules to get my minor, thanks to European Studies Department who do not recognize my French for Academic Purposes as fulfilment. So, my initial plan was taking this and another level 2000 EU module. This is the module top in my list at first, but when I look into the course profile – it is empty!!! And I started to hesitate as I wish to learn something out of it, not just a general module where students go to class, laugh and write and walk out and get the modular credits. Jan actually told me the syllabus was a bit with various themes and not like how we got in Europe of Dictators. But for I know I am not a history major and not sure if I can cope in the level 3000 Cold War course, I decided to take this up and see if I should drop it if it is really a module that is aimed just to fulfil the credits – as I what I described whether if the professor is just ‘教爽’. However, things changed as I followed the course. Yes, we were covering various themes, history from different perspective – which included my interested topics of Nazism and Hitler. Not only that, the lecture was more than just delivering the ideas but learning about life – at least, that is what I got after attending the lecture. The lecturer is just good and tutor is really responsible. This module is taught by the Dr Murfett which I mentioned earlier who taught about the founding of Penicillin. I enjoyed this module very much as it does not only deal with facts but also the discussion of such a wide range of things which has consequences in our life among the class. I am very lucky to know my tutorial group who were really kind and lively! Of course, as it is also a general module for some people, there were comments where it is quite heavy for a general module – but, who cares, seriously, ha! The recommended book list consists of 78 books which I wondered if any of us finished that list – I definitely didn’t but I would like to if I am given enough time . And to see how this module impact on me – just see why I did not drop this module even though its final exam falls on the same day as the EU2223! I decided to take up the challenge for the sake of the interest I have in the module. Crazy, you might say – but that’s what you do as a student! For details of the module, we covered topics like War and Peace (1914-20), The Wall Street Crash & the Great Depression, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”, Imponderable but Not Inevitable: Warfare in the 20^th Century, ULTRA: the Vital Link in Signals Intelligence, Anti-Semitism gone mad: The Final Solution, Dire Age of the Atomic Bomb, A Medical breakthrough: the Discovery of Penicillin, Dateline: Cuba October 1962: The World on the brink… , A Social Revolution: the wild 1960s, Nationalism, Drugs and Sport, The Aids-HIV Crisis, and Ethnic Cleansing. Other than that we had two debate sessions, one which you will be the debating team while another where you participate as the floor. For details on what I did for my debate, refer this post. Other than that, I would like to thank Dr Murfett and Hussain for being such a great educator for this course.

EU2223 Ages of the Mediterranean

How exactly I came about taking this course is just bizarre!!! My initial plan for taking EU modules were Why History and another module called ‘ EU2221 Empires, Colonies and Imperialism’ and perhaps, another alternative of EU2217 European Politics. European politics page sounded very basic and boring, seriously, and that actually put me off from taking it although it might be interesting in truth. But what happened to EU2221?! I planned this timetable last semester and found out this semester before bidding that it is not even in the list! Apparently the European Studies programme did not update their timetable and I was left with finding another EU module to fit in my timetable. Again, taking level 3000 module was not in my mind at that time yet! So, this is the only European History module other than Why History, so I basically was left with this choice. But things changed as I checked out the course outline which included many things which I questioned along my life. Besides, as my eyes glanced at Islamization, it twinkled! To me, it may be the time I repay my debt of not studying properly during my secondary school… The reason of taking this module is really just that simple and funny. And things started to get interesting as the teacher teaching this class is Dr Fairey who was teaching and tutoring me in EU1101e last semester. Nonetheless, by covering millenium of history, this course is quite heavy, given that I am not from any history, christian, mediterranean or european background. Anything this course is, I am not! It was quite tough for me, truly speaking, and I need to put more effort than anyone else in class because of my ‘distant’ to this subject. Ultimate inferiority is unavoidable when compared to others but I guess this is again when the will of learning beats reality. I enjoyed the class to the max. Attending class was none other than one of the best times of the week and an escape from my lab work. Of course, when I say it is best time – it is not what most of us defined as ‘fun’ of playing, go into class and turn on Facebook or whatsoever – my life with this module is more on notes, books, information and learning, learning and learning! I guess, at some point, my wish in fulfilling my promise to study Islamic history properly had made my way so far as well. It became so personal that sometimes I might feel disappointed with my ‘uselessness’ when I did not do as well as expected in it. But I had learned to look at it as a way of learning. From this module, I get to learn what learning is all about, in theory and in practical. Personal experience with this module is just too long for a post like this. The module covers from ancient Greek, classical Greek, Roman Empire, Hellenization, Christianization, Islamic History and Europeanization. The textbook which I bought first hand, had now become worse than a second hand condition – which Papa always regarded as ‘the purpose of book’. So, I am glad I actually put in effort regardless how it might turn out. Throughout the course, we had symposium where we went around four themes and we worked on tesserae: Did Rome Fall? Or Was She Pushed?, Is Islamic Europe an Oxymoron?, What is Love Anyway?, and Is Beauty Truth?. The themes were interesting and we learned even more from it. I did the second topic and you could find out about what I did here.

EU3230 Cold War in Europe, 1945-1991

As I mentioned, level 3000 history module? Wohoho, it is tricky! Yes, so far the only year 3 history module was Europe of Dictators which i took last semester in Dr Kelly’s class. It is a thrilling experience and I enjoyed it since, again, it has something to do with Nazism and Hitler. However, I knew very well how much I am behind a normal history major in terms of knowledge and maturity in writing and analysis. Hence, taking this is always not in my mind. But when the timetable was changed, I thought of finding one module which exam is not on the same day and it was this. Plus, given that it was the same professor who taught this and Why History – Cold War course outline consists more interesting information rather than the empty Why History ones. This is why I was worried whether Why History was a dummy. However, Jan did tell me she didn’t do well in this module but it is interesting. So, my initial plan was to take this and decided to drop either Why History or this. The result was: I did not drop any of them . Dr Murfett must have did something to the class that I didn’t drop the class? Nope, the class is as normal as ever – but is a very good class. His lecture style is different, of course, from Dr Fairey and Dr Kelly – but I find it another good experience. Not only that, I think it’s because I am now older and on the verge of leaving school, I became so thirsty in terms of absorbing knowledge. Cold War is again another topic which I have no background of. Come back and think about it, except some random information about Nazism, I did not actually has any knowledge about history – this is how backwards I was! Yes, so many of a time, when I didn’t get to read before lecture, I might end up writing notes just by writing spellings of names which I heard, and need to go back to check about it. Wikipedia had become one of the best site for me to have background reading, kudos for it! The class was sometimes lively with some enthusiastic student who ask question. And of course I can’t do that since my knowledge is so meagre that what I asked might be their ‘what? aren’t you supposed to know that in primary school?’ question. I do ask question to the teacher and some group mates. The module covers: A convulsive continent (1917-45) , An iron curtain is drawn down over Central and Eastern Europe (1945-49), The Tito-Stalin split and its deadly aftermath, The Western response (i) from Morgenthau to Berlin (1943-48) and(ii) The Berlin, Blockade (1948-49), Life after Stalin (1953-56), Khrushchev cuts loose (1955-64), The flowering and withering of the Prague Spring (1968), Ostpolitik: A Trojan horse? (1966-74), Poland exposes the cracks in the Soviet wall (1980-81), Reagan rides into town (1981-88), and Eastern Europe before and after the Gorbachev tsunami (1982-91). As usual, when you are studying something you have no background in, you are learning a lot and this is what happened. Besides, we has two debate sessions: one as debater and another as the floor as well. What I did is listed here. And I am so thankful to have such wonderful group mates seriously. They were real great teachers to me and I actually met Toffa on a bus and we chatted a bit. She actually encouraged me to go for it if I like history and shared his fascination towards the subject with me. I have to admit, that’s one of my best bus ride chat ever!

Looks like I had finished discussing all modules I took this semester. And one thing Suanne told me on how I came about European Studies which I find it true, “looks like there are many miracles happened to let you get your European Studies courses’. Yes, when think of it, it all happened like a miracle. Defining when it start is like defining when Cold War start: maybe the moment I decided to learn French? Yes, and I started to self-learn before I am admitted into NUS and given the letter to apply LPP. And I got LPP for French and then when I realize I am not allowed to go for SEP and realized I can get a minor in European Studies? And then I started to put myself into European History and then I was not allowed to get European of Dictators but I spotted Dr Kelly’s ivle in my first Eu1101E class before he end the class, then I am in history class after hating it for most of my life, then timetable changes and with all the twist and turn, I came through taking all these wonderful courses. What else can I ask for, right? I am already feeling too lucky for being able to realize the wonder of a subject I loathed in this one year, and it changed my life and my perceptions. And with research project which helped me to grow so much and learned so much – if you ask if any regret I have, I would say I wish I could get such a year more than just one year, haha, so greedy! But yes, I shall conclude this year as really really really interesting!

Posture

2011-04-30T02:25:00.001+01:00

Posture by ~mafer-seow-wayn on deviant ART

This is one that I tried with colour pencil. I find some insight of human movement and imagined this object to jump in mid-air, sensing the freedom and hope. But as you see, due to my poor drawing skill, it turned out to be not really as ‘dreamy’ as what I imagined. More effort should be done. The colour choice wise, I think is still acceptable. What do you think?

Curiosity about Learning Attitude

2011-04-23T18:56:00.001+01:00

After a consultation with one of my professors, I was asked with this question, “I was just curious, why didn’t student come and talk to me?” First, I have to admit I was standing in an awkward mind of ‘but I am here – so why are you asking me?’, but this question was exactly the question I asked one year ago.

Growing up flipping encyclopaedias rather than fairy tales, I questioned a lot. Sometimes they are answered, sometimes they were not. I question and think a lot – and I think that’s what most people called daydreaming. I took my time over a bus ride, waiting arrival of friends, waiting for class – questioning what I saw and reason them, at the same time imagine. And when you grow up, reality hits you hard. School teacher don’t really like questions – at least most of them don’t. The education now is so much like a 3 in 1 coffee that everything is packed and teachers were to sell them over in this package. Some of them indirectly did showed their role as an educator but those had slowly become the side dishes, instead of the essence of education. I am lucky to met some who really sparks your mind but most of my school life, I have to behave like a normal manufactured kid – sit down, listen, absorb, remember, answer, score, get the certificate. Your interest, curiosity? Those are side dish, remember? And slowly, we were moulded, into what we were expected to be: disciplined, independent, obedient, efficient – anything an employer wants for employees. This is what some called corporate education. And I never really thought so much of it as I still question and reason – but on a personal level. Things remained so ‘normal’ until I started my third year in university…

Two things induced what I thought: UROPS and History. Questioning became so much more efficient, if it is extended to other people. But to my disappointment, not much people enjoyed the sentiment. I used to be angered by how my mentor question me back my questions – but at least, I enjoyed the process of me reasoning with the question. But opportunities for that became so limited when everything is on the Internet. And I started to realized there’s a problem in my document analysis where I have no idea where is the problem. This is when I found something which Internet did not have – and that was the first time I consulted the professor. And through pleasant consultation, I learned not only theories which one could find on the Internet, but understanding and logics, which is a product of one’s thought rather than a factual display on the flashing screen. Somehow, I felt learning became more interesting all of sudden. As a result, I spent my last year in my university, enjoying learning like no one else. I figured out, there were times when I was as excited as this in discovering the knowledge, but it was one of the rare occasions where I was actually venturing a field and sharing them with someone else. Learning became not a one-way thing, but like what I found out this semester – Greek learning. And then, I was asking myself, what had I been doing all these years?! Not that all teachers I met were totally corporate teachers. Not that I must stay as obedient as I should. I could still remember, during my Lower Six, due to certain low tides, I became very aggressive in learning things. I asked a lot until one day the teacher actually labelled me as the ‘problematic student’. I understand as a teacher, it is annoying to have a rambling student blurting questions all the time you stop teaching – but that incident did silence me a lot thereafter. Papa advised, “ Question – to improve, but not a blind one.” I had always had that in mind and hence am sure I was not asking stupid questions. Besides, with wonderful teachers in NUS, I had wasted two years – not utilizing my opportunity to the fullest, a shame on me! And part of my conclusion came back to me.

Yes, we, tend to take things for granted. Especially when the subject is your major, you started to think that you should understand all that, you can study by yourself, you can check the Internet – what is the need to question then? Teachers became the transmitter and everything else is yourself. The course was compacted that most of the time, you were thinking of finishing and enhancing your knowledge on that area – rather than to think out of the box. When you really is lost, you always have friends whom you could ask from. Independent learning became so independent that the intellectual exchange had shifted from between teacher and student to between student and whatever knowledge source (ie Internet, books). But for my case, I realized – I took my major for granted and that costs me a lot. Your goal was so capitalized that everything else that is important for an education became so blurred and forgotten. And it was one year ago when I found back the joy – of learning something not for the sake of grades. I find relaxation in French class, I feel happy in Science classes – but the joy now, had became so clear that I suddenly saw how dark the things had been. Partly, it was because I was doomed to graduate and hence, pressure of pulling up CAP lifted and I was free to look towards my attitude towards learning.

And I am glad to say that I am showered with such a luck to discover this at an early stage of my life. Of course, there are many factors which brought to the question why students nowadays would rather find answer themselves rather than spending some time for some philosophical talk with people. Some of them are really just shy and peer pressure played some role. I am shy at some cases but nothing come between me and my curiosity towards mankind intellects, that’s the driving force. This is a lesson learned, which did not only helped in history discipline only but I find it rather useful in scientific career. By the same token, I find it an art, to share knowledge but at the same time retaining confidential information. This is something, which a researcher, politician, intelligence agents, or even a normal worker should learn for their work etiquette. And yes, the professor seemed upset of not having students asking – what I could not change how students behave until all of us change our attitude towards learning...

Finally, Happy Easter!

The End is The Beginning–Or is it always continuous?

2011-04-22T17:37:00.001+01:00

Good Friday just passed by and Easter weekend is coming on its way. And this marked the last day of Reading Week. From the KEVII graduation night till today, I admit, there are fluctuation of emotions and thoughts, coming to and fro, feeling my soul with so many things that I could not imagine. The last week of school was undoubtedly one which will make me remember school more. Not including the chance of me studying another degree, this will be my last week in my undergraduate life and I am glad to have experienced so much and these experiences had actually moulded part of me today.

That week added on with a certain importance as I was so lucky to listen to so many wise words, from teachers, seniors and even juniors. One professor shared his view on future after my oral examination, another talked to me while I visited his office on that same Thursday, another on the next day and as I started to tell others I am graduating, wise words came as well. I am so thankful to have all these. However, no matter how calm I am, how optimistic I am – mortals are still mortals. I still have to understand the fear of uncertainty when it comes to my future, especially a job. I am lucky to have settled a place to stay after graduation – that’s pretty an assurance of not sleeping on the street (although I had not excluded that possibility which I told one of the prof). However, a job – especially one that at least could allow me to embrace my knowledge – is what I needed now. Sometimes, you can’t control what you get is going to be what you want, but I am still hoping for the best – as I know I could not give up. In terms of whether things will turn out right, I believe it will. As one of the professor said, it’s me who will decide whether I will do what I wanted to do – the problem is whether it is possible to do it as planned. Yes, I wished to become a researcher, but I may need to persevere more, work harder, learn more and leave the rest to fate. At least, I am proud to have a dream which is not contaminated by greed or selfishness – I am proud as I have a dream to change the world, and make it a better place. At this time being, all the feelings a mortal shall feel: fear, worry, anxious – they exist in me, but I know I should not succumb to them. I should learn to embrace them and learn on my way to future. Just like what Papa and Mummy said, ‘If you want to be someone great, all these are small matters and you should learn how to overcome it. It’s a task for you.’

I am not sure if any of you have such a similar experience, but if you have, let’s stand up and work hard together. I am willing to take up these challenge and be a better human. These experiences are not really pleasant to heart, but it is something given by God or whatever Divine you believe in – as we know, good things do not usually comes in an obvious nice package – the key is us, to discover the good within all of them. I am sure I can do that and let’s hope for the best as we unravel our journey ahead…

Le Show Johnny Medley

2011-04-16T03:43:00.001+01:00

Ah, c’est un beau medley. Je l’aime bien!

My Undergraduate Testimony

2011-04-15T13:35:00.001+01:00

It’s a rainy evening and it described exactly how I’m feeling now. Just finished a continuous assessment and the last lecture of my undergraduate life as a Life Sciences student, I felt so many emotions.

When I first enter NUS, I strongly believed that I’ll find my dreams here and learn. As roads towards the future continues, I thought, maybe what I’ve learned in high school is much more valuable. It turned out that both – were incomparable and equally precious.

Coming to NUS, means my first time studying away from home, under a different country, different authority. Though not so much of a cultural clash, I definitely realized how much home meant for me. I missed home, I missed the people, I missed the food and I missed my memory. The past seemed wonderful and now in Singapore, the past looked like the Grand Époque. I braved myself, convincing myself, past is past, the best I could do is to keep those memory with me all the time. And hence, I continued my journey. Post high school, meant the first time to have long hair. To many, it may be a small matter, but for me, it is my first time learning how to tie my hair, keep them neat and bear with it when it’s warm. I realized, it is a way I learn how to manage myself. And then, school starts and I learned a lot. Sometimes, it’s not about how much As you get, it’s not about how many facts you know – it’s about how you grow up through the education. I have to thank the opportunities for I gained a lot through the education apart from knowledge: great teachers and friends. These people, changed my perspective, added on value as I mature with my thinking. I am glad that my passion towards Science had not diminished by augmented through the joy and sorrow. At least now, once again, my enthusiasm had proved itself worthy and determined enough.

Studying in NUS brought to me one surprise which I’d never dreamt to experience – history. Not till the extreme, yet I loathed this subject before NUS – at least, one year ago, I hated it because it’s blunt, difficult and – I never really did well in it. One year ago, through some kind of fate, I make myself to take history as a trial, in attempt to achieve a minor. To my astonishment, I did not end up hating it or finding it boring. I brought back with me, after one year, not only the hope of attaining a minor but the best experience and lesson I’d learnt in NUS. I enjoyed the freedom of thought, the content, the teachings and the classmates. I look at it now, at a total different dimension. I did not do particularly brilliant in history still, but this time, grades did not matter anymore – something had changed me. When I was nine years old, I met a teacher who ignited my dream to be a scientist; when I was twenty two, I met a group of people who made me change my mind about history. It became not just a subject – but a life lesson, which I could learn along my life. I would say, to be able to experience this, is not an ordinary gift, and I cherish it.

To my hall, I would say a hundred thank you but it is still insufficient. As an international student, hall is my home away from home. It’s the place I experience what I will not forget for the rest of my life. Yes, CCAs might played a big role, but what made it so special is the experience. I’ve no doubt at all I find joy in hall. Hall life has all kinds of emotions but these are the little things that made the memory bittersweet. I still remember I chose KEVII was mainly due to the map showed a near distance to Science and it has a special name. I was, as a first year, thrilled to find out it has a Dining Hall with High Tables and long rows of tables – blocks with their own colours – just like in Hogwarts. And I’ll soon find out the life in there is as magical as one could imagine of Hogwarts too. No one will understand how it is like until one stays in KEVII.

And finally, to my family, my full salute for all their support, love, care and understanding. They taught me wonderful things which I still keep with me and they helped me get along with my life. In the course of entering NUS, I appreciate their full support – financially and everything else. They gave me encouragement, when I’m about to fell; they gave me assurance when my confidence started to fade away; and they bear with me when I chase my dreams crazily. Their love kept me going yet as a place for me to hold on, when I’m about to lose myself. I thank my parents who always let me be their little daughter, caring me and providing me a place to snuggle up when I feel like. I thank my brother, who grew up and shared so many wonderful experiences with me. Though separated by distance, their existence had made me go on with my life as a happy and lucky lad.

In the end, I will have to stop here as I have so much to say but it’s just not enough by one post! All these will be in my heart and be part of me forever. It’s three years and I might not be graduating as a top student, but I know for sure, I am graduating as a better person than three years ago.

Cold War Debate: Not So Cold

2011-04-08T15:20:00.001+01:00

Just yesterday, I had my round of debate in Cold War in Europe module (EU3230). Why, I felt I was so inferior at first. Many had background in Cold War and they were incredible sane hardworking history majors. Just take my group for example, all of them were really admirable good students! During discussion at the earlier stage of this semester, I usually find myself talking some very shallow things while it was their interpretation and analysis that woke me up, telling me I should not only stop at fulfilling just for the module, but really putting myself into it. During the first debate round, I was the floor. I shivered upon seeing how the fight was so intense and everything was so quick. The questions were definitely of quality and the explanations were really right to the point, showing how much knowledge one has. To speak the truth, my confidence fall right after the first debate. And when my group lose the coin toss and giving the other group the choice of choosing the motion, I knew it would be tough.

The motion came out to be:

This house believes that Khrushchev is out of his depth as the ultimate successor to Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union.

The worse came when the other group chose proposition. During the class, without any background, I was so dumbfounded by the fact that Khrushchev had been losing his marbles all the time. I can’t believe what should I do when my team was supposed to oppose the motion and support Khrushchev as not out of his depth as the ultimate successor to Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union; when, in fact, I was going to label him as one big buffoon! Straight after getting the title, I was convinced that the first thing I need to do is to delete any thought I had and brainwash myself. The ‘programme’ started with me getting books like his memoirs and books talking good things he did and his autobiographies. In fact, in the end, I started to see good things in him and I am now totally convinced that he is doing well (that’s not really a good thing but it helped a lot!). We had meetings and decided and discussed – and I landed myself on his foreign policy on Cuban Missile Crisis. It was quite one big thing and I felt the stress actually. But nonetheless, others were getting important topics as well, all of us just need to work hard towards it!

Other than writing out the essay for my 5-minute speech, which is the expensive 15%, I need to practice it as well. Unlike in Why History, I do not want myself to succumb to such embarrassment and regrets anymore. I took my one night practice over at the staircase near my room. It was quite funny because there were people walking around. Other than that, I do want to thank Hui Min who encouraged me when I felt certain inferiority over speaking in front of history majors; and also the G3 girls who let me repeat my speech over and over again in front of them! And the time came when the debate started. It is bad to feel nervous (feeling like throwing up and increased heart rate with cold sweat…) – it is worse when you are the opposition and needs to wait till the second half of the debate to speak! We took the break for the loo just to release all the stress before our first speaker started the talk. As the third speaker, I was quite nervous but at least we did it!!! During the Firing Session, we were asked to stand up (OH MY GOSH!) and we were subjected to any question anyone in the room has. It was really an intense fight and I think it is much more than the first one (maybe because I am in it, haha). Anyway, we were asked to leave the room for the voting and returned to listen to the professor’s comment of this as a ‘first rate performance’. Seriously, I think that at least means I am not doing something rubbish in the debate. And in the end, it was announced that we won the motion! Not that I think we did extra-super-better, but I think this is a very subjective thing and shall leave the comment for the commentators…

Anyway, this is a really good experience…

And this is the Debate Essay I prepared for my speech upon Khrushchev’s Foreign Policy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

*Note: Personal particulars were removed for privacy purposes. This document is for reference purposes only.

Debate for Why History

2011-03-20T16:36:00.001Z

This is when I feel time is so expensive! The debate costs us 20% of our grade but research is 5% while performance is 15% – and each of us were given only 5 minutes to speak. So, technically speaking, if you did not participate in the Q & A, your 15% is spread across 5 minutes – which gives you 3% of your grade every minute you speak!

So as Group B, we were to propose the motion of “Development in Science and Technologies helped strengthen ideologies of nation states in 20th-Century Europe.”. If it is a normal happy week, I would not have felt much about it but this week, I was bogged down by another modules and I am totally lacking in preparation. I have to admit I did not really rehearse my speech and the speech I delivered during the debate is a total spontaneity! Plus, I was running late from the class before – which was the symposium.

Imagine that! I were to change my mind from a middle age history to 20th century history – using a science brain! But anyway, I managed to try my best in the Q & A, thanks to basics learnt last semester. But I could have done better if I did not put so much time on the symposium. However, I am glad I strived through .

This is the essay we were to pass up regarding research on our part.

* Please note that this is for reference purposes and personal information was removed for privacy purposes.

How Far Are You Willing to Challenge Your Weakness?

2011-03-18T14:14:00.001Z

Trust me, I know I will usually address an undermining of passion towards scientific research, but this time it has nothing to do with science – at least, no directly. This week had been a really fearful week for me as I think it was my first time putting so much effort in putting things right, especially on something which in the past I had not done well. Age of the Mediterranean, is a module of Hellenization, Christianization and Islamization, and Europeanization. Not to go into detail, I will just highlight the main topic in this post. I mentioned I had a very bad experience in the midterm, but the symposium work happened to be as stressful. Looking back, why did I think when I take this module? First, it was a total accident. I planned to take another EU module: Empires, Colonies and Imperialism. At least the title sounds something related to my country’s history and it’s cool to learn it from a different perspective. And planned for that since the first semester of 3rd year since it was my last year and I would like to make sure I can fit my timetable. However, it appears that, the website made a last minute update right before 2nd semester and my whole timetable was messed up – plus, this particular module was not even in the list. I would have been shouting , “WHAT?!” but instead, ended up with several e-mail bombardments between me and the European Studies academic convenor and CORS office. In the end, I was of course forced to find a solution by changing my direction. Not thinking I can handle philosophy or literature, I ruled out political science as the module description was not really appealing (was expecting more drama ), and decided to went back to history instead, a subject I had not been very well in, with a certain of despise and bad experience during high school – but a new found interest back in NUS. There were only three EU history modules: Why History, Age of the Mediterranean and Cold War. I need only two but I took three – but back to the point –why didn’t I throw Mediterranean out of my choice bucket?

It contains really things that is related to science and learning; something like I will be deepening my knowledge back to its roots. And second, it contains Islamization – one of the weakest subject I was in. Although I realized what we learned in SPM is totally irrelevant to this, the initial idea was that I would like to give myself another chance – to prove or to fix my weakness. I wish I will change my view about Islamic studies under different education system. And I think this is sort of the time I should challenge myself, an ‘enemy’ many could not conquer. And this week is the symposium for ‘Is Islamic Europe an Oxymoron?’. To left with a total independent research on a topic I don’t even have basic on, is cruel at time – but I tried my best. Working as a group, again, has its pros and cons. I was to face with people who weigh their individual essay more than anything, walked out of discussion, not discussing, not replying emails – but yet, because of knowledge and social skills, got to be in better position during the whole symposium. I see people who were so experience in this topic that not only they have background in this but also external sources to help them in their study. Seriously, when I was facing all these and comparing them to me, I felt extremely helpless as it’s a year 2 module and the teacher obviously will not tell you answers. In the end, I read a lot, find a lot and spent almost every second on this – dumping my research aside (because the machine broke down as well la) – and I found factual stuff about my piece – but what’s its significance? What’s the hidden message? What’s it going to do with Islamic Europe? How to link it back to my argument? In this, due to lack of background about its historical context and the religion context – I am really miserable. What’s more was I thought at least I could sort things out during the symposium, by knowing more about this piece – things I don’t know. Due to time constraint, I was not able to dig information out of it and even left with an unfinished group essay!

And when I say group essay – it is supposed to be done by the group. But what happened? Because of obvious slanting grading towards individual essay, no one cares about group essay! Although there are one or two who did helped out but we didn’t manage to finish it by symposium and as the symposiarch, I was subjected to the embarrassment of asking the teacher if we could pass up on the same day but at a later time. If this is the case, fine! But no one really make any special changes to the essay until few of us busy editing at the last hours of that day! Being not really an English person or History person, I am really lack of confidence in editing the essay – especially those not by me! However, in the end, we still make it. I was so exhausted and miserable that I decided to just click send and it just sent! I understand it was not up to the teacher to cause many of us unable to discuss about our pieces but what can I do, this I guess is when we can just look up to the sky and say, “Ini adalah takdir Tuhan”.

Anyway, the tessera I was working on is this:

Documents:

Symposium Group Essay – Islamic Europe: Clash or Continuity?

Tessera Essay – Islamic and Western Civilization: A Covalent Bond?

Tessera Handout

* Information about their authors were removed to protect their privacies.

* Please note that these are just for reference as they are licensed. Other than that, opinion produced in the work is purely our interpretation and do take note it was just a product of minds from undergraduates consists of student who are of history and non-history disciplines.

Friday is not the End

2011-03-12T02:05:00.001Z

It was a pain, not being able to share the joy of the end of the week with your classmate. This is worse when the supposed last day of a week didn’t end well. Yesterday, I started my day with Age of the Mediterranean midterm. I did not expect myself to score or even end the test confidently as I know how much behind I was in term of the knowledge. But I did put in effort and I wished to at least manage to understand the questions. In truth, I would have said this is one of the worse midterms I had ever had – but to look at it another way – I did not fail, but just found out this doesn’t work. By what had been seen, although painful and heart-breaking (yes, Dark Lord do have some of these moments, please), I should be prepared to score maybe a zero out of it. I may have looked at it as though it doesn’t matter, but deep inside, I wished I could have done better. For this, I must put in more effort for the rest!

Things didn’t went well after that. The Cold War lecture was magnificent, with the lecturer bursting out of the classroom to ask the Japanese class students to stop chirping outside and once a student walked out to shut them up. Seriously, sometimes, Arts students are annoyingly talkative. But after taking Arts classes, I realized not all of them are like that – good! The group meeting after that was not as I expected with certain people who seemed to regard their individual portion more important than the group ones. It is true it will be graded more but how can you show you did a great job by not adhering to the group’s motive?! But I am glad to have some of the group people to be very independent, initiative and willing to undergo this busy period of time with the rest of the group. This undoubtedly is what we always seek in a good leadership, not someone who stay in villas while the people were seeking a place to warm themselves.

The day did not end just like that. The moody element which hitherto had been weighing me down creep in me even in lab. I arrived at 6 in the lab to discover the HPLC machine is down and that’s the one I booked! Other than that, the mass spec is totally gone haywire as well. As I was telling to my mentor over the phone , “Tell me, what is working in the lab?” – frankly speaking, what in the lab is still working smoothly? I called Girish to ask if he will be using HPLC that night and he said he will be using it. By that, I have to stop all my experiment and walked back hall to grab my dinner. Just when I get my dinner, a call came in. If you want an expression, that will be imagining the food has already reached outside your mouth and someone took it away from you. Yes, Sheena called to say Girish said he won’t be using HPLC tonight. “ What?! Do you think this is funny?!” Yes, I felt like yelling to those people who never been considerate. I was forced to put down my dinner and walked to lab so that Sheena could teach me how to construct the new method. The saddest thing is, my mentor came in later and it was someone else who teach me – what on earth! But I won’t be upset by that, as Sheena had been a good teacher. My day then ended with me walking back to chew on the cold dinner (which still taste bad when I’m hungry – hmm), a shower and whole night of gluing my eyes on the screen…

What Actually Does It Mean for being a Set Décor-ian?

2011-03-05T08:51:00.001Z

If you are wondering am I going to join into next year HallPlay: No, I’m not! But this is what I discovered while studying the lecture notes for Why History? The 20th Century course. Being in HallPlay Set Décor for two years, and one of it as a head of the department, I had never put my job on this side of the world. I did imagined us, creating marvellous sets and architecture, showing intricate details and professional imagination – but never an application in history. And here you go, a quote from the lecture note:

What aerial reconnaissance that the Luftwaffe was allowed to make over southeast England seemed to confirmed the build up of the FUSAG troops. Thanks to the ingenious work of an army of set designers, stage and scene builders recruited from the world of film and the theatre, mock up vessels of every description made from canvas and plywood began appearing in the ports of Kent, Sussex and Essex. Inflatable tanks and devices that simulated the tracks left by tanks and heavy vehicles were used to make it appear that every wood and copse was hiding parts of a vast armoured force that Patton would bring with him across the Channel to drive Rommel's Army Group B back from the coast and allow the fiery American general to spearhead the attack on the Rhine and the Ruhr.To add apparent certainty to German conviction about the Channel crossing, a phantom refinery was constructed in the harbour at Dover to reinforce the impression that it was going to service Patton's force. These imaginary scenarios were cultivated by very talented and skilled experts and technicians...

- Dr Malcolm Murfett

After reading this, I was so touched and honoured to be able to join in a department which had served such a noble entity during the course of peace-keeping. Hopefully, this spirit will stay and be in our (Set Décor-ians) heart even in the time of misery. As Dumbledore said in Harry Potter: “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of places if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

Hope you enjoy this piece of ‘snack’ and feel better out of all the stress you are having, while I have to head back to my experiment, which is facing obstacles again and again, yet a great adventure.

Eventful Day

2011-03-03T17:26:00.001Z

Right, let’s take a break after such a long series of Christianization of Roman Empire, Islamization is yet to come…

It’s half past midnight and I would like to dedicate this post for a rather eventful day. The morning went by with Mediterranean symposium where the group of ‘Did Rome fall? (Or Was She Pushed?)’ presented their view on the tesserae chosen with circulating snacks, which is a traditional element of a symposium! The thing was since it was the first symposium, things did went a bit out of hand at times, but no matter, I still enjoy the learning process. Besides, my group mates started to turned up and talked to me out of the blue. So at least now I get to remember them better, yay! Dr F was saying about the email I sent him and I had questions to ask as well, but the thing was I have another tutorial right after his class just downstairs. So, I asked to meet him at four instead. Indeed, between this two hours, really interesting tutorial occurred. Unlike the first tutorial, which was rather serious and academic, this time was really a good laugh. We spent the first part of tutorial discussing about themes and view on lectures: particularly military/naval history narratives’ impact on identity and nationalism, our lives, implications and intermingles with political, social and cultural discourses. The second part of the tutorial focused on partly anti-semitism and also question of race, religion with economy, politics and history. For that, we were to be in our group and role-play. And this is the beginning of the whole drama!

Group A: Jews in Nazi Germany. As a Jew, you are to deliver a speech to your fellow Jews in Germany.

Group B: Nazi German: Defend anti-Jew policy.

Group C: Liberal British: Arguing state to counter Hitler.

Group D: Asians: Colonized by British, sympathize with Hitler. Enemy’s enemy, our friend.

OKAY, the nature of the role-play was interesting enough and guess what, I was in the Nazi German group. The whole discussion sounds so wrong when we have to go against the traditional thought of seeing the Nazi’s policy as evil and go towards it. Not that I find it difficult, but to be able to or given an opportunity to do that in public – like a tutorial class, was way absurd and really a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. When we present our part, we stated ‘we would like to inform that the following opinions are not our own opinion’ and continued with a ‘Hail Hitler!’. That was way crazy and perverse! Our part was mainly saying how bad the Jews are and why the policies should be pushed forward. Other groups did presented with good ideas as well. By the end of presentation, each of us at the audience floor would have to ask some question towards the presenter and this added on to the previous laughter. We were laughing so much of how funny the nature of the tutorial made us put down the barrier of being traditional, seriously.

The tutorial ended pleasantly and followed up by me walking up to teacher’s office. Obviously he wasn’t there and I met one of the classmate (don’t ask me who, because I barely remember his name when I saw him) in Mediterranean who wished to pass up papers as well. While waiting, we did talked for some time, which gave me access to preparation for my own symposium. Out of boredom, I went examine on each of the professor’s door – which is quite rude, but it was a pleasure to read all the articles they posted up. After some times, what appeared on the corridor was Dr K and he was like ‘ Are you waiting for Jack?’ For a moment, I was wondering what should I respond as – first name term to address my professor, that’s still absurd though students did that all the time behind the teacher, haha! I just nodded, at least. Dr K was saying he will be here in a moment but apparently time was ticking and Dr F was still nowhere to be seen. I was okay with the waiting as I don’t really have anything on after that and my mind simply just need some kind of junk-time space to clear all the weariness before another round of craziness. Dr K finished his talk with some student and started to came over to help us to phone Dr F (wow, as though we are urgent student matter, tsk) and even walking down the staircases to find him. A quick chat with Dr K where he was interrogating – whoops, asking about the course we are taking with this professor. As usual, I remained silence when there is another willing speaker, haha – sorry lah! Even after that, he offered to help the other student to pass up the paper (not as though I didn’t offer my help, but I think maybe I just don’t look reliable as the Dark Lord huh?) and the professor went down to check on that other professor again (Is there a tendency a professor slipped and rolled down a staircase? I don’t wish there is. I would rather wish Dr F just went for a coffee). Dr K was then telling me of how Dr F was still surrounded by a bunch of students after the 1101E lecture (oooh! no wonder!). Interesting on how professor describe the squeaky student’s background sound, reminded me of my Mom’s primary school, haha! Thanks for Dr K though who stayed for quite a while to entertain me by even showing a ‘strangling’ sign on how all the students were buzzing around. I understand how it could be felt but seriously, I do really feel that’s the thing you will miss the most after everything, haha! (I remembered how I felt the same feeling on Bernie, one of my student – indeed under my direct care when I was there, and I really miss those days now, haha!).

If you think waiting was the end, then the end was the beginning of another thing. This was one that nearly scared me out of my soul. Dr F came finally and I was dragging my bag into his office, thinking of telling him this conversation will be a short one as I have few to ask and I understand professors might wish to leave the office or what. But before I can say anything he asked me to enter the office and said he wanted to ask me something. This is for real: I was so shocked as I was questioning myself ‘Did I showed I haven’t read enough for the class that my poor performance in class needed the teacher’s attention? !!!’I could feel the silence and he started to ask me on opinion of tutorial and how to make it better. *faint* Now I am relieved! At least he was not going to lecture me on how I did badly in class, phew! The conversation continued with my question and then my symposium stuff (some minor technical problem). Not disclosing much of the conversation as it was really lengthy in some sense, plus a privacy of both of us. But I left his office with another big news hitting me: Immuno CA result was out. HUH?! WHAT?! AT THIS TIME?!

Yes, that was when I decided to drop by the result board before heading to lab. While waiting at the bus stop, gosh, someone suddenly talked to me! OMG, can all these stop please?! I kept being approached by people whom I don’t remember and they remember me! That makes me so terrible and embarrassing! I guess I should draw down faces of people I met everyday so that i can have a ‘contact list’ with their face on it when they talk to me. That girl was from my Why History lecture (freaking, how can she know I’m in the same LT?!) and talked to me about MCQ test. Obviously I was blabbering on how I might be down by God knows how much question due to cabbage questions. But then we parted to our own way and I accidentally met Tina in Science canteen. The rate of meeting people was so astonishingly high and I’m glad at least I remember Tina. The result turned out to be as usual – not really brilliant but not as bad as I thought – so so la! And when I entered the lab, what knocked on me was the fact that –20 was not working and people were rescuing things from it. Since the mass spec was in use, I helped out a bit and witness yet another move-the-boxes operation. Seriously, lab management should evolve a bit. And later on, I was informed my protein being freeze-dried at the lyophilizor was melting. What?! Yes, I have to re-freeze-dry it, sad! Luckily I came back to lab to check on it – if not, ha! And my day continued rather in a smooth way with a late dinner and pages of history texts…

So, it was indeed an eventful day – not that things happened were highly significant or highly insignificant, but it just make your day feels like a day . Tired? Of course – but if my body was not meant for tiredness, why was this adjective being created then?

Recess ‘Week’

2011-02-27T16:31:00.001Z

Minutes to midnight and my ‘off day’ will be over soon. But that doesn’t mean I had been closing all source of ‘learning’ for 24 hours. In fact, I had my night time studying a while and planning, arranging my academic life in weeks to come! Why am I so exceptionally hardworking? That’s not me! Nope, it’s me alright, just at a moment whereby a little effort is needed. Today was supposed to be the last day of recess week, but in spite of putting down everything and run right into the sea for a good swim, I realized my constraint in catching up with school work: readings, revisions, assignments, reports and also research project. I spent more than half of my waking time inside the lab for everyday during recess week and another half figuring how can I catch up with so many academics. In between, I made some writings on my thoughts and some doodling. And then, yesterday, I made a decision – I need a break. And my ‘off day’ went like this…

I woke up late in the morning and prepared myself for the Borders clearance sale in Expo. Sipping boxed milk, I walked and boarded bus and MRT. In Expo, I spent two hours browsing the books. There were a lot of books – just not those I find any particular interest in. I did found a biography of Winston Churchill, though it was about his younger life, I bought this only one. I got one Infinite Possibilities for Elaine for she needed some motivation. I was intensely dissatisfied by the outcome of this sale, but that was before I walked out to find out all food stalls were crowded with people. In the hope to have my only ‘off day’ lunch in peace, I would like to try my best for a satisfied lunch. Adding hunger of food and books, what resulted from it was non other than my evening plan: having lunch in Orchard and Kinokuniya. The flaw of the plan was, Orchard was flooded with crowds as well! But luckily, I did found Breeks, which is quite empty. I had a set lunch which included a drink, an onion soup, a main course and a dessert of brownies. I am truly happy with the lunch albeit its normalness of the food quality. I had ice-cream for myself as well! After that, I had the whole evening strolling up and down the lanes in Kinokuniya, searching and browsing books. I did found the book the professor mentioned but did not feel like getting it, ha! Basically, the whole few hours were spent flipping books in medicine, biology, physics and history sections. It was a pleasure to be able to do this, after so long of a time I get to spend time quietly in a bookstore. In the end, I decided to get myself a sudoku puzzle book, since there was no Stars everyday outside my doorstep, waiting for me to doodle numbers on. I left for hall right after that…

And sitting here, I was mentally preparing myself to resume work after around 10 hours of recess ‘week’. Yes, there are a lot of things to do. One of the few ‘worries’ was the symposium group project. I have no idea was this a norm in Arts faculty but people just don’t reply your emailS. Yes, I sent around 5 emails and only one was replied, pathetic. I was not sure if I should seek help from Dr Fairey but apparently, I think this is a year 2 project and I wish to be more independent in handling this stuff but I do not wish things like last semester happening again! If I could ever ask the divine forces, I would ask why on earth am I chosen for this job when I have a research project on my hand at the same time – am I just plain ‘seemed to be’ so talented even in the eyes of the Divine forces? But at the moment, all I can do is be strong as I always be and face all these rationally. One bad things is that I have no idea how my group mate looked like (I forgot how they look like, essentially) and can’t spot them out from crowd or class! That’s so disastrous and apparently one of the girl sat beside me in class and I was feeling strange on how this girl started to talk to me as though she knows me – and after the whole day only I realized/guessed she was one of the group mates, what a shame to me! The next thing that make me worried was the urops project. Research is something that sometimes requires repetition and patience. But I do feel a bit frustrated with all those folly of my mentor. For example, he did not give me any pipette tip boxes and forbid me to use his. When I asked where can I use pipette, he pointed to his old boxes which could not fit the new pipette tips due to different height. Right, is he an idiot?! When he realized his idiocy only he went around to find me boxes. Anyway, this was small matters that tinge your feelings once a while, but generally, I think I am mastering scientist’s etiquette well now and is improving myself every now and then – which is a real comfort to me in the midst of craziness.

So, three days from now, there will be a test on 20th century history and I got to get myself prepared!

My Study

2011-02-16T00:47:00.001Z

Preparing for two CAs had not been this tough before – does that mean I had not been studying hard for the past few years? I’m not sure about it. But I reckon that I haven’t tell you about my study so far. I had been letting this blog to rot unintentionally, I apologize for that.

This week was a ‘slow down’ phase for my urops project as I foresee the need to sit down and concentrate in facing my CAs. However, this did not stop me from stopping down other modules. I had this symposium group for Age of the Mediterranean course, which I thought I will be sitting there doing my best as a team member. But the truth is, when I thought they will choose people the arts student know, the lecturer accidentally (or rather a reminder) suggested a traditional way of choosing a leader, such as throwing a dice or drawing lots. By doing that, I was chosen to be the symposiarch the moment I found the black dot on the piece of paper I chose out of six. I did grumbled a bit under my breath as this semester was not a really friendly period for such interesting job. Taking up three arts modules did make me travelling and staying in arts faculty frequently, especially when your lecturer was kind enough to put all the readings in RBR. The problem is, however, I am taking urops project, which requires me to go to lab whenever I am free 24/7! Yes, the requirement did not ask for such an intensive working time – but as a researcher, I wish to advance my project as far as I could, venturing into a whole new world. By having the commitment of spending as much time in arts and science at the same time, I have no idea what time would I spend to be back in my room – sleeping? And that’s why I did worry a bit when I was chosen to be the symposiarch for the symposium titled “Is Islamic Europe an Oxymoron?”.

One more worry about this topic is that, I’m the one and only person who opted for this topic. There are four topics, in fact:

1) Did Rime Fall? Or Was She Pushed?

2) Is Islamic Europe an Oxymoron?

3) What is Love?

4) Is Beauty Truth?

As you can see, the titles were super-interesting and obviously title like “What is Love?” was exploded with number of people. After so many rounds of choosing, some people eventually realized the quota will not expand and withdrew from their previous topic and chose Islamic Europe ones. So, it was quite pathetic to see this thing happens. But I do start to feel some of them are really good as well. Worries did come along as people reply my email late, or not answering to questions. But so far, I am still doing my job even though there are two CAs just at the edge of this week .

Now, back to my two CAs, yes – Immunology and Cold War. Ironic isn’t it? One is Science; one is History. One is about battling vigorously for survival; one is battling ‘coldly’ for supremacy and ideology. But both need brain to remember a lot of things. Immunology is heavily weighed with a 30% and I keep on wondering if I will be able to understand and applying the concepts and facts flawlessly. Cold War is a 10% CA but with a significant amount of dates, names and events to remember. Both as a level 3000 course, I think I really need to pay more for a real good return.

It seemed that this semester I am challenging myself again to a higher extend, but I still realize I feel happier this semester. Something is wrong in me? I don’t know. But I am definitely blessed with a lot of things such as really good teachers, good happenings, interesting projects, wonderful lectures and even my lab work is starting to see some sunshine. Not that I found out some super-duper secret of Science, but I think I really can finally let go of emotions and work better, not to mention several nice people in the lab who gave me smiles and laughter besides some teaching. Special thanks to Bhaskar who taught me better now, Sheena, Girish, Amrita, Guna and Bidhan who really taught things when I needed some; Kishor who always share machine with me and teach me as we learn along; and also my Bench neighbour, Ryan who actually tell jokes (I think he’s bored at his bench as well) and told me about European and American history when he saw me reading or when I asked him. Yups, life had been going real great (even by meeting someone on the corridor, with a smile and a wave is really pleasant), haha!

Wow, I realized how this post went from a negative side to a positive ones. I think today will be a bright day, with tummy filled. And I think I should get back to study a bit before going early for Why History lecture !

How All These Come Along

2011-02-14T18:04:00.001Z

So, the season had ended somehow. Not only this, given that I will be graduating this semester, this will probably marked a distinct period of which I participated in sports. Looking back, the two sports I joined in this IHG, were two very special sports to me. In fact, I would like to share my story of sports here (since I feel like taking a break between Immuno notes ).

Some people, especially girls, were so afraid of joining sports. Many preferred sports that make them “elegant” instead of sweat and mud. But for me, I know how lucky one is to be able to play in sports and go to the field, because I was not supposed to. Growing up with allergy, I will get terrible reaction even by having myself in dusty environment for too long. Training for 2 hours on the field, I will get 2 weeks of rashes! However, I was not brought up to keep myself away from all these. I still go to PE lessons and my parents referred my problem as my “discipline” problem since it was the scratches which were deadly. All by all, I was not a sports person. During my primary school time, I was significantly quiet, school band and brownies were the things I attended. But when I went into secondary school, things changed.

Everyone is so competitive. To survive, one must excel in academic and extra-curricular activities. As a usual me, I initially thought of joining something quiet. But things did not happened as they were planned (as always). Hesitating between orchestra, PBSM and KRS – I was “dragged”, in a sense, into KRS when the call for registration were voiced. I ended up enjoying all the years I had with it. In it, I were to crawl, climb and etc; which included loads of loads of recurrence of allergy. But the most out of the blue event was sports. Joining sports was never my plan. And one day, my friends came and told me how they signed my name up for volleyball so that all of us can go together. My first reaction was , “HUH?!”. Yes, I have no idea what was volleyball except the image of colourful tri-coloured ball. My secondary school life was very happy with volleyball team. In fact, after a few weeks, my friends dropped the sports but I did not (it came to me now, why didn’t I drop it as well?!). In volleyball, everything was okay. We don’t go into mud or grass hence reduced my chance to have rashes. We get to skip classes legally, we were trained to be disciplined and learned true sportsmanship, including a total calm emotion no matter what happened.

When I graduated, I thought I will not join any sports ever again. But here I am, in university, joining volleyball and softball, plus several others in these three years. First, I signed up volleyball because I know that sports. Second, I signed up swimming simply just to get the chance to play in water – that’s the only sports which I can get rid of allergy which was associated with sweat and grass. I signed up squash because my Dad was a squash player and I think I would like to “inherit” his sports; but I ended up dropping it due to training clashes with softball (I still enjoy playing this though). I signed up soccer because there was no female team in secondary school. Finally, I signed up softball, simply because I thought baseball was cool! Yes, the reason I signed up softball was as simple as that, haha! Then, only I realized how rare it was to have girls to sign up, haha! However, one semester into the sports, I realized I like the sports and also the team it will give me. Just like that, I was stuck in Softball for three years.

This year, I took a photo of what happened to my legs. This is one week after playing on the field and the rashes were drying up, but still visible. The blue-blacks were injuries being banged by all those sliding players, which also had one small abrasion on my chin.

Yes, this is what I went through. Surfacing of rashes, itchiness that cannot be stopped, scratching and waking up every morning to find your hands covered with blood because I had been scratching whole night without conscious… And you, healthy people, were worrying about sunny day that will burn your skin or sweat that smells? Some of you, were too lucky, to even realize how much people wished to walk on grass field without any health risk.

Making of Modern Europe Simulation Brief

2011-02-13T14:40:00.001Z

Wow, it had been months and it was actually last semester when I took this course and did the simulation for Congress of Vienna (1815). However, since it had been in my hard drive and it won’t be of any use in near future, I decided to upload it up to share with you, in case any of you would like to take a look as reference. Plus, this uploaded section was part of the whole project, so do mind the limitation of this document. The biggest flaw of this work is the footnoting was not done properly, I apologize for that. And, please be reminded this document is copyrighted to me and my groupmates, hence the material and work is strictly for reference purposes. I had removed certain sections to protect the privacy and identity of anyone involved in the project.

Enjoy!

Here is the link to the document.

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

2011-02-11T18:12:00.001Z

Days passed and here I am, back in school. Chinese New Year was a great one with family and friends. I know it was said for time obliterated but as I say that, it left me something as precious as the event – the memory of the event. The last day before I came back to school, I was really feeling so homesick when I was actually at home. I wished I could stay longer but I know I had been taking away enough school time and I must be pragmatic at times and not lurking back in time that did not exist anymore. However, it would be a great joy for me to write down my Chinese New Year as to mark these as another important thing to remember in my life .

Chinese New Year Eve involved a really nice dinner in a restaurant with halal food . However, I did get my hands on some cheap red wine, which were really not some special wine. However, it was the event that made us all merry, you see. The dishes were a bit slow but no doubt we had Lou Sang, shark-fin soup, usual dishes like fish, chicken and vegetables which were of Chinese New Year style and also Loh Mai Kai. The desesrt was red bean soup with geng geng . We invited two of our cousins and our meemaw to the dinner as well (of course, meemaw can’t drink). After that, we went back to make the last minute preparations and bathed before prayers at 3am. To kill time, we had mahjong, HUAT AH! This was accompanied by exploding Chinese New Year songs and also all those ‘as though free’ firecrackers being played outside!

After prayer, I was so sleepy that we went off to sleep before waking up to the first day of CNY. We went our way for Vegetarian dishes as it had been years when we decided to set this special day to be a vegan. Yes, we ate and after that visited the usual temple for prayer and visited my cousin’s house. That’s because my father’s side relative will be there. This includes my 1st uncle and his wife and his sons and all his granddaughter and grandchildren. In fact, I was actually facebooking with my nephew the day before since my age were closer to these nephews and a niece. Ah, my Dad’s relative side children were largely boys. In between, we were served with vegetarian home cooked lunch which were superb! After that we were informed of the 2nd cousin’s wife was pregnant and was expecting fraternal twins, whoah! And we revised back our family’s root which involved my grandfather or his father being the head of ‘Hong Men’ and brought a ship of people by the surname Seow/Siow (or any that sounds like that) to Malaysia. My first question was, isn’t the Hong Men thing a kungfu stuff… But apparently it was not but a group that goes against the Qing Dynasty and were ‘wanted’ by the government, haha! Comparing this to Mum’s side which was of Qing’s Officials which were to travel Southwards when Qing collapse, looks like these two families were absurdly contrasting huh? Anyway, after that was the praying spree again.

The second day of cny went to my Mum’s side relative. We visited meemaw and then 1st Aunt’s house where I witnessed a real life change of a delivering lady (I am amazed how much a woman can ‘transform’ after labour – that’s quite scary). Anyway, I get extra angpaus due to so many cousins who were married, haha! Third day of CNY went to a morning meet with my high school friends and a lunch in Rasa Sayang. At night, I had a gathering with KRS friends (which we set 3rd day of CNY every year as our gathering). The fourth day of CNY, relatives were to come to my house but everyone were quite busy. So, after sending Pleasure off to school, we went to visit my 2nd Uncle. He was battling with brain cancer. So, the day went by like that with me having a little tantrum so that my Mum gave me more time to ‘nua’ with her, how bad am I, haha! Yea, basically a bit of homesickness which made me so sad that day because I am leaving on Monday. So, my Mum tried to cheered me up using McDonald’s, which is not the main point because the twister fries were out of stock and we went there because the mall were simply too crowded.

Basically, these few days were well spent, though not really very personally with my immediate family only. I do wish to go back whenever I have the chance. But this new year is quite an eventful ones… !

Home! For Chinese New Year

2011-02-04T16:51:00.001Z

Shrieking “Run Home!” that day during IHG had meant something now, as I am really home now! Delayed Air Asia flight left me leaving Singapore late at night on Tuesday at a supposedly 11pm. To prevent traffic jam or last minute rushing, I decided to leave hall early and the truth proved my right instinct as there are no taxi available for booking, nor did there any free taxi around. In the end, I boarded a bus and travelled all the way to Changi by MRT, which includes episodes of standing and holding the handrail to defy inertia. Anyway, my evening at the airport was quite a pleasant and slow-paced ones. I had myself a cup of regular White Chocolate Latte (which Christina was not fond of) and had my bucket of dinner from the usual Chinese stall in Terminal 1. After that, I sat quietly on the bench and read “Europe since 1945” and kept noticing some interesting people walking around. When the time came, I checked in my bag and decided to pass through the custom and was legally out of Singapore for the next few ten minutes. In between, I went over to the Time’s Travel shop to browse through the pages and find myself liking most of them. I guess I am a shopaholic when it comes to books. Anyway, when I saw books which were familiar, I remembered they were actually what Pleasure bought for me and I started to feel guilty, haha! Therefore, I decided to pick three books back for him and this is a real tough task for me. I don’t feel like buying things that I don’t like for others and yet when it is something I like, I feel so attached to give it away. I think this is one of those times when I really need to learn how to give. I treat it as though I am buying for myself and got Pleasure three books: 1000 Years to Annoy the French, Home Rules by Jodi Picoult and a book about brain (I will post in the photos next time). I felt so much in reading them hence told Pleasure I may take them for a read in future, haha, that’s so me! Anyway, I do find one book that might be a good reading for myself, The Crusade. This is because my symposium work will be titled ‘Is Islamic Europe an Oxymoron?’ and this might be connected somehow… And yes, I did spent one hour just for that and went to my gate just in time to chat on the net for some time before entering the gate.

The flight took off late due to some baggage problem, letting us snoozing on the plane for several minutes. And just like loads of other time, I was sitting by the window and this time, I get to see other planes taking off. This is due to too many flight on that night and the planes were somehow queuing up for take off. Looking at the small lights on the runway track, I knew I left the ground of Singapore and in one hour’s time, I was landing safely on Penang airport, with my family outside. We drove back and thought we would go to sleep straight but I was welcomed by a mahjong table in the living room! So, around a few hours were spent on mahjong before we decided to doze off for tomorrow’s hectic schedule… And henceforth, my journey back home for Chinese New Year 2011!

New Year Eve: Peaceful :)

2011-01-31T12:04:00.001Z

Writing of the last day of last month on the last day of this month – how perfect could it be? Yes, 31 days ago, it was the last day of 2010 and Pleasure went for barbecue in his friend’s house while me and Papa and Mummy went out searching for a nice New Year Eve dinner. After going to several places, we decided to went for a place where we get to listen to songs and have a rather better meal, which brought us to Bryan. Yes, I had lamb while Mummy had salmon. Papa who was not feeling like eating anything heavy had fish. In addition to that, I tried the banana boat (which is asian-ized with goreng pisang). They obviously had some promotion for alcoholic drinks but Papa was saying we still have some at home, so, we save our tummy for later, then.

And then, that night was spent on watching movie on tv and also a glass of champagne with xo… I should say it tasted so nice that I wanted more but apparently Mummy was saying I had too much (it’s only one glass, okay…)… But nonetheless, that’s how I stepped from 2010 to 2011 !

A Day of Rain and Mud

2011-01-29T16:29:00.001Z

It was a day for Softball matches and we thought it will end at around 3 pm but things did not just happen in simple way. We woke up in the morning and had nice warm breakfast in dining hall while watching the rain pouring outside. By that, we had been prepared for a muddy play but when we went down to the field, it was not just muddy, it was watery! For the first match against EH, the bases were literally lying in a pool of mud and you can’t differentiate where is where!

Part of the time, the rain became heavier and we were told to take shelter. On and off matches were not really inviting as they tend to downgrade the game’s momentum. But what can we do against nature, then? We tried our best in playing and I do think we did a lot of awesome saves and also a lot of stupid mistakes. But in the end, we managed to win KR, without even knowing it… Blur-ness in ultimatum!

Yes, we got ourselves into Semis which will be held after Chinese New Year. I do wish the spirit stays on and passed on to every generation, just like how last year, I stressed on bringing up the newer generation – but I think I am quite happy to see all the juniors brought up to love softball especially at the circumstances that they had not know about this sports until coming here! Yes, and this time, I think we can do it! Lots to learn and improve but there is willingness for all these –> good!

My post might look disordered – that’s because I feel like resting now: with abrasion on my chin and both knees, rashes on hand and legs and a soul that needs rest

Christmas Day Lunch and ‘Tour’

2011-01-23T13:10:00.001Z

Do you wake up early in the morning of Christmas Day, hopping up and down of your bed and shrieking as you see the presents were all under the Christmas tree? For me, no. Instead, we have lunch somewhere nice! Other than just for the event, it is also so that we could bring Grandma(Meemaw?) out to have real nice meal. This is my Meemaw(maternal)!

Our lunch was spent at the Golden Sand and open air places have this problem when you are at the tropics – bird droppings on certain places (It’s fresh!).

No matter how, other than the disruption of bird dropping episodes (I was so bad and smart enough to avoid the seats ), we continued the meal with any food we wished to have. I had some that I craved for and to my surprise, I was full even before I thought I should be. Anyway, the food quality and their services had improved dramatically since last time and I truly appreciated it. Not only that, it was quite crowded this year, filling the dining space with inevitable clattering of utensils. Though, most of them were families and it was so warm to see so many family get together during such a season, no matter where are they from. In between of the meal, there was a Santa, indeed an Indian Santa, walking around the tables, handing out candies to the children. I, sadly, was not considered a children. Though one really weird event was the log cake incident. While trying to get a slice out of the Christmas Log cake, the people were asking – or rather, mumbling about the log cake being very hard to cut. Me and Pleasure was joking as we went back our seats that “because it is LOG cake”, hahahah!

So, after the meal, we walked around while Mummy accompanied Meemaw to rest at the lounge. Meemaw was aging and she was not really fond of walking around. In fact, she find it difficult to even balance herself! It’s not easy to guide her around but as a Life Sciences student, I know this is a cycle most of us will go through unless we die young. Anyway, yes, we did take some photos of Meemaw…

Me, Papa and Pleasure went over to the beaches, of course! Before that will be the more interior part where we still have pools and I spotted a cute lion on top of the resting table. It reminds me of NUS lion but no doubt, I just took a photo of it .

One thing you will be warned before going to the sea will be this:

Actually, my main point of going to the beach side was to find the horse-riding stall which I dreamt to had a horse-riding experience. It appeared that there was no horse in sight, so we just hang around for a minute or two… There, I found this interesting row of ‘chairs’…

And here is Papa and Pleasure on the beach, white white beach…

The beach was lovely, if only we were there for a real sunny day and beach – but we were not prepared for that, ah…

We got to see water activities and also banana boats which were not adventurous at all… But no matter, just looking at the view and feeling the wind is already a great thing to do during a vacation, ain’t it?

Haha… this is not me – but I always love how the colours shine under the sky!

At the lounge, I discovered something that reminds me of HallPlay – the fire place. Alright, the wood here are real wood, fake fire, and the whole thing is much solid that the play ones. Pleasure and me walked summore to find some interesting places …

At the same time, the hotel personnel were walking around advertising about their upcoming event (some Christmas party on the beach, apparently) but we were just not feeling of going. And finally, we were to leave the place while Pleasure posed with the newsletter and ‘house’ .

Driving out of Golden Sands, we went along the road to have a look at how things had changed and we made way into Hard Rock which I hadn’t have a chance to look at since I missed the gathering last year.

The entrance was greeted with this if you were to exit and look out. The quote was from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, one of the Legendary rock stars. But I do feel the quote very cool, haha!

Other than that, on top you will be these ‘strands’ which Pleasure claimed to have lights at night. Then, this is when Papa started his lecture on optical fibre. Yes, these are optical fibres…

As a Hard Rock Hotel, you must have the Hard Rock element obviously and this is their display. A fireplace with Beatles?! And I was quite annoyed when I saw how ‘unsimilar’ the Beatles are to the real face. Anyway, the exhibition inside are better, I think…

Seriously, I think Papa who loved music so much was quite attracted to the display as we walk. He grew up with these and I grew up listening to these as well, what more can I say?! The environment was really nice with all the oldies songs as well. Only that this hotel lacks the calmness of Golden Sand as there were more younger people here and they are generally much more active…

Here, the Santa was not an Indian – but e was with a Santarina and a bike, cool right?! Yes, they were travelling using the bike and went over to cook up the environment…

But instead of the sand and crowd, I think I prefer this part of the hotel better. Just walk out of your hotel room and you are in the pool – how nicer can one be?!

There were many designs connected to music and I tried to have one together with the wall :

Even the toilet sign have to be like that?! WHAT?! Well…

And there goes my tour – ended up sitting on a hard rock !

Photo Album for this day!!!

Gushing Through Time

2011-01-22T17:58:00.001Z

In the midst of introducing you, my readers, with my vacation days, this is one of the time when I take a little break to mention bits of my current life. If you were to question what am I doing at the moment, I am supposed to be doing all my readings and academic; but there it is, my Immunobiology text propped open in front of me, exploding Chinese New Year songs playing their way and me surrounded with papers and books. Yes, having Chinese New Year to look forward to return home is an undoubtedly awesome experience, but the side effect includes a gradual increase in homesickness, not to mention how all the workload will exponentially growing till then as well.

So far, week 2 has ended with a boom! Everything was happening in huge mass and volume. In between, I sent off a friend for her exchange, attended a play which I never had chance to complete, had my friend to crash my lecture, crashed a lecture alone, had an unexpected and super-exciting experience on riding last train and taxi, met several wonderful and inspiring lecturers and so forth (when I say this, most of the time means I can’t remember anything specific at the moment, of course). Everything seemed to be smooth, happy and yet with a certain level of stress.

My lab work was not working in a superhero speed as I really can’t help it. The lab was just too hardworking that I have to wait my turn to use the machines, ha! But at least, I did not do any terrible mistake, albeit certain foolishness of me which ended up with a certain price to pay. Besides the current lab, I am planning and contacting certain person to consult about future, a.k.a my career in research field. I hope there will be significant replies soon as I really wish I can contribute in this field with the rest of my life! If research to find the truth is against the Nature, and there is a cost of going to hell when I die by helping the Nature, I won’t mind going to hell – really! If I am able to help so much, I don’t think Hell will be a matter of fear!!! RAWR! Anyway, I’m going way out of topic… yes… Let’s continue…

The subjects I took this semester were highly attractive, seriously. The lecture outline and contents were ultimately something you should explore in a tertiary institution. For Age of the Mediterranean, I will be learning mainly Hellenization, Christianization, Islamization and Civilization. And I am very looking forward to learn about Islamization because I think this is a chance for me to learn back what I should have learn properly during secondary school! However, the class was now concentrating on Greek, hence explained a couple of Greek words we learned from the lecturer who actually translated a Greek and Italian video to us in class. By the same token, I did had a reasonable of joy spending time under tough subjects which has a rumoured demanding lecturer. Yes, there were a lot of requirement and expectations but the lecture were really amazing. As a matter fact, I starts to suspect I enjoy these challenges – which is quite creepy at times. About Immunology, I have no idea how will I be doing but I’m trying my best now. The lecturers are pretty nice and good. So, if I’m not trying my best while they are trying their best teaching us; I should feel very very sorry, ha!

Yea, so far, this is the updates for now. Lecturer actually wrote essay to explain what he want to say to us… which is why newly-printed readings are ready nearby again. Sometimes I do gave a bit of grumble as an expression – but the feeling is so different from complaining. I think it is weird yet awesome ! Just like what a lecturer said to me, I shall say the same to myself, “You can do it!”

Visit to Kek Lok Si

2011-01-17T15:02:00.001Z

The longer time I went to university, the crazier I am when I go back home. From time to time, I started to realize how much I am acting like a tourist when I come back home. The more I stay outside, I started to see how beautiful home is, just like how I missed my hometown. Indeed, I still did not achieve my dream in returning back to my hometown but is blessed with the ability to return home at least once or twice, and maybe more, in one year’s time. So, when me and my brother went back home, we were living as though we were in paradise! And this very day, we decided to have a “tour” somewhere. When both our parents were not in good affinity to extreme activities like hiking, cycling or extreme sports; ironically, Mummy agreed to pay a visit to Kek Lok Si.

So, we took the trip that evening and headed to Kek Lok Si. The journey included certain distance of climbing up flight of stairs which were surrounded by stalls selling stuff. One of the interesting things I set my eyes on are these:

Seriously, this reminds me of Fred and George Weasley and their stink bombs – and now there are stink bombs and sneezing powder just right before my eyes. If it hasn’t been me talking myself into being nice to people, I would have bought the whole row over, haha!

As the journey went on, we passed by this tortoise area where you get to feed the creatures, but I didn’t do that and continue with my trip up to the pagoda…

One good thing of going to Kek Lok Si during non-peak period is the calmness and the silence which I enjoyed most. All we can hear were wind gushing by or some birds twittering away. The scenic view had also fed my satisfaction as well…

And I sort of like the patterns as well… haha!

However, we did visit the new statue over there. We did not ‘climb’ up there but took an inclined life, which reminds me a lot of Willy Wonka’s elevator .

The entrance to the statue was closed due to construction work that day, so we just walk around and I actually donated something (I forgot what’s it call, it’s something on the roof, I guess).

And along the road, we saw these weird ‘statue’ which we have no idea what they are there for. And the answer was quickly revealed as we continue our journey!

Besides that were statue of the 12 Chinese Zodiac:

View from the platform:

After the new statue, we went the other side where the pagoda resides. After some grandeur of some nice temples, what welcomed us were these colourful plants. It’s very pleasant to be there and with a not-so-hot sun!

There was this bell where you get to ring for your wishes. I did rang the bell

And this is the pagoda from bottom. We did not went up there due to construction as well…

And the flower surrounding it include very very big hibiscus!

Before we leave, we had a short tea time at the stall near Kek Lok Si which I had coconut juice and laksa (claimed by Papa as the famous laksa stall’s student’s stall). But it was already good so imagine I went to have the famous ones!

Pizza Dinner for Carmen’s 21st

2011-01-12T15:35:00.001Z

Oh yea, before I went home, I had a very nice dinner of pizzas with fellow G3 to celebrate Carmen’s 21st. It’s at a place called Old School and the cafe is called Timbre. The pizzas are nice! I did something crazy as well: dedicating Big Bang Theory Theme Song to all the fans. But it appears that the singer did not want to perform that…

This is outside the actual eating place: quite dimly lit… but pizzas are nice… But before reaching here, you need to climb a long flight of stairs which reminds me of KEVII! >.<

And also must mention this! I drew this for her, haha!