Do viral URTIs last for so many days? Feeling absolutely miserable now, plus stitches will FINALLY be taken out tomorrow! Really can't wait, since all 4 stitches have actually broken down and the ends of the nylon digging into the raw wound is actually causing a hell lot more pain than the wound itself. Shall I make it a point to tell the dentist that he needs to perhaps, umm ..., practice his knot-tying a bit more? Haha .. that'll seriously goad him too much, goodness knows what he'll do to me in that dentist's chair next time.
Had a nice time back at school today, met so many old friends!! And Monty, turns out I'm not the only one who skipped lessons today - 4 out of 8 of us didn't turn up. Going off to watch Pan's Labyrinth tomorrow, yay!! Feeling VERY guilty actually, I'm only going at average speed right now, I need to push my brains to work harder. Hmmm .. someone mentioned antioxidants. Maybe I'll try that. Was thinking of a concoction of:
Antioxidants (pine extract or something? But I think those are awfully expensive) + Vitamin B complex (calms the nerves somewhat, good for stress) + Vitamin C (so I don't get ill) + Ginkgo nuts/extract (need more brains) + Guarana extract (to work like a maniac) + High-dose caffeine + Low-dose fluoxetine (to stop the anxiety)
I'm going to end up with liver failure, kidney failure and erectile dysfunction. =\ Wait .. fluoxetine causes low libido, not ED. Oooops. Not too bad then, huh? Still not too late for the antidepressive effect to kick in, and definitely plenty of time for the antianxiety to start working.
Oh gosh, what a paradox. I'm sitting for a scientific examination, and here I am, thinking of dabbling in the pseudomedical supplements.
Heck, I'll just down 10 cups of Starbucks coffee, an entire bottle of Bailey's, some panadol and a few boxes of diazepam together. At least, I'll get some worldly indulgence before I die.
Maybe it's the hunger that causing me to feel doomed to misery. My grand total food intake for today:
Morning cuppa Porridge for lunch (Brownie ate all the meat in it, I couldn't really chew on the pig livers. The doggie eats the nice stuff while the master eats the leftover plain porridge, that's starting to get odd.) Porridge for dinner (oh, but it was a huge bowl of stuff) Clear soup after dinner Lemon juice drink
If this keeps up, my skin contraction won't be as quick as the loss in mass. *Shudders at the thought* ... I'll end up being a skeleton with a tonne of sagging, loose skin.
1. I'm down with a nasty viral URTI, diarrhoea, and my stitches broke after kara. 2. My tank's hood FELL APART. From a box, into 4 planes of wood. Had to do emergency surgery on it, and this time I used steel L-brackets to hold it all up - shoule be bullet-proof now!
Anyway, about The Dance Floor. OMG, OMG, OMFFFFFG. If any of you watched the first couple, the so-called "Spider", you will want to remember how I once bitched at length about this woman in the salsa class who was THE absolutely-worst dancer I've ever danced with. And guess what??
Yep, you've guessed right, that's the very same woman that I danced with, and tried to lead me, and couldn't do proper spins for nuts, and had the most awful cuban hip movements ever. OMFG. You know, I have TOTAL disrespect for the judges now, how can that piece of festering crap even get through?!?!?? And don't even begin to be impressed by their "acrobatics" - all were executed wrongly, and I say that with absolute confidence. Aerials should - and can - never be only about brute strength, it's the technique. About musicality .. well, let's not go into that.
And that standard of Rock n'Roll .. oh come on. Let me dish out some suggestions, go to the Carriage Bar, NTUC club, Raffles town club, or ANY dance club across the island, you could close your eyes, grope, and land yourself a MUCH better dancer than those 2 abysmal idiots.
Those 2 are a total disgrace to dancesport, that's all I can say.
Of course, the Lindy Hop sucked. You just can't do the Lindy without getting your basics right - Yx and I went through 5 f*ing years of basic classes before we "graduated" from it - and expect to dance it even decently. For choreographed dances like the Rhumba etc, maybe. But not the Lindy. Which is a point seen even in So You Think You Can Dance, when one of the finalist pairs totally butchered the dance. Don't get me wrong, that group was GOOD when they did what they usually do (salsa), I just feel a lot stronger for a dance that means much more to me.
ok, done with tonight's healthy dose of bitching, although I STRONGLY think that the aforementioned couple should be sent home immediately with brutal comments.
Now for a hot soak in the bath, some soup, and more diabetes insipidus.
Ah, came across THIS webpage while surfing aimlessly between periods of study.
"All crinoids are passive suspension feeders. They produce no feeding/respiratory current but, rather, rely on extrinsic, ambient water movement. In extant crinoids, the food-gathering apparatus functions as follows: each featherlike arm that radiates from the central body bears an open ambulacral groove bordered by triads of fingerlike podia, or tube feet, which are terminal extensions of the water vascular system. The longest tube foot in each triad, 0.43-0.85 mm in length, is held out at a right angle and flicks passing food particles into the groove. After a food particle is captured by a crinoid, the shortest tube foot wraps it in mucous secretions; ciliary tracts on the groove floor then transport it toward the mouth. In living crinoids, food particle size ranges from about 50 to 400 µm. Diets include a variety of protists (e.g., diatoms and other unicellular algae, foraminiferans, actinopods), invertebrate larvae, small crustaceans, and detrital particles."
OK, so the flicking thing I caught on video is the feeding mechanism! And they do have tube feet. The oyster eggs have the right particle size for them, so hopefully it'll do well. The crinoid lost a couple of feathers while at the coral wholesaler's, but they're actually growing back - a good sign of growth.
LOL, took a leaf from SmartyPant's book - or blog, rather. So now we're called The Cornies eh? I've always been thinking "The Bitches", but perhaps that honorary title still belongs to our dear WJ?
Had a really nice meet-up with the other Cornies (minus SmartyPants and Da-da) tonight, but my .. was it such a baaaad idea for the stitches in my mouth! It's feeling very odd now, not really painful per se, just this prickling sensation like tiny (and hard!) ant bites. Almost broke them I think, while belting out Bai2 Se4 Hun1 Li3 (White Wedding) with Ang Ku Kwei ... we're both STRESSED TO THE EXTREME with the impending exams, and went into acute psychosis by screeching at 2 octaves higher than the normal male voice. =\ Had a chorus of Man3 Jiang1 Hong2 (Red River .. ??) with all the old TCHS guys around, and I think YX should pick this one up too! Time to convert a RGS girl! Finally, WJ, Monty and Yx ended the disinhibited night by doing an encore of Bai2 Se4 Hun1 Li3, once again at impossible pitches.
Next session, I'm going to make sure YX does her fair share of extreme entertainment too, by dressing up in a panda costume and singing Wu2 Wei3 Xiong2. And Monty should perform Ji2 Xiang2 San1 Bao3. =p
Horribly hungry. Guess what I had for the entire day?
1. Morning cuppa 2. Campbell's chicken soup for lunch - about 200 calories 3. OOOOOOH!! Duck porridge for dinner with the other cornies! 4. 500ml of soy milk before dinner
So weak from lack of food, I have hardly the energy to study. =\
About time, too. If you have a BMI of 23.5 and are fretting, I think you've got a serious problem. On the other hand, if you've a BMI of 25 and feeling comfortable about yourself, don't chain-smoke and binge-drink and jaywalk, I think you'll be a hell lot better off than the hordes of self-proclaimed health fanatics who consistently jay-walk and drive dangerously. The time you spend picking out the absolutely-perfect food that has 10 calories less than the usual could jolly well have been spent getting a hell lot more satisfaction out of life, IMO.
And I think a few people ought to remember this too.
Made some interesting observations today of the feather star! But alas, a camera can (almost) never be as astute as the human eye. I've tried to capture the moment on film, but you need to look REALLY CLOSELY.
Now, if you remember the picture of the whitish, really fine hairs on the feather star's arm, a couple of posts down? Look closely at those hairs (not the huge, red feather) in this video. I just fed the tank with 0.5ml of frozen oyster eggs (roughly 1 - 1.5 million eggs, each 30-50 microns in size). The whitish, fine hairs started making random flapping movements! I can't see the oyster eggs, obviously, so I can't see how the feather star actually captures the food, but its a start.
** The embedded video is really tiny, so you won't be able to see anything. To see a blown-up version, click on the video itself - you'll be taken to the page itself on Youtube's domain. At the bottom right of the video there's a grey panel with several icons, click on the very last one - that'll blow the screen up real huge, and even then, you might need to observe the video a few times to catch it happening. A little tip: look at the left side of the "feather", near the middle. The whitish hairs form this pale, translucent "curtain", but once in a while you'll notice flicking movements and the appearance of transparent windows in the "curtain" - that's the hairs flicking downwards, so you get to see the background clearly. **
When it is no longer the physical that is floundering,
you'll know
that this love can no longer be.
Too many people are looking for indestructable pillars in their lives - perhaps, someone who can take your pain and not feel any themselves. Or do not have the right of feeling, perchance?
I may have run the same marathon as someone else have, but I may have run it with a stone in my shoe or a silent pain in the heart;
I may have come out of the run with limp in my walk, while someone else may have just emerged smiling and sauntering with the wind in the face.
You say, "Stop limping, see, the other person's fine." Oh, the piercing implications of a simple statement - I could write a book on them.
The crinoid's legs - just below the feathery stuff are 20-30 of these skinny, curved and hooked things which I think are the legs. How come they don't have tube feet?
Feeding aparatus - even tinier feathers! I suppose those are the sieves they use to trap plankton?
The pain's a little better this morning, I can definitely talk more now. Hmmm .. so school or not? Definitely no 7-day break for me as given by the MC, but I'm yearning for an excuse for just that 1-day rest. And I don't want the stupid stitches to break either, before STO next Wed. Not nice to have mouth stringed up.
My thanks go to the 2 wonderful final year dental students, one of whom laboriously picked up my calls while I was incapacitated, and even went the extra mile - literally - to collect my mom from another building (where she was lost) so that she could sign my Medisave form. I'm seriously impressed, and very grateful.
And oh ... I bit the poor nurse on the finger!! The nurse was such a dear, I wish medical nurses were so friendly and knowledgeable. Something's definitely wrong in our practice, you know. Doctors are nasty to students, nurses are nasty to everyone, doctors are not as nice to nurses as they can be. I didn't see that yesterday.
Sitting in dining room, trying to pore through nasty neurology notes. Fish tank screams, "Come take a break! Look at the fish!"
Option 1:
Succumb to the cajouling, and spend 30 minutes staring into (in my eyes) a lovely fish tank, thinking, "Oh well, I need a rest anyway".
The new option:
Glance at the tank, it's nice. Go to Reef Central, look at some of the amazing tanks out there, go back to the tank and think that it's a huge load of shit.
To ZarZar & Mimi, thanks so much for the lovely and kinky gifts from Japan, Greece and Cambodia! But most of all, it was so great to meet up with you guys. A reminder that all's not lost with the exams looming overhead, and there's still so much fun and laughter around. =) Mimi arrived with our present for ZarZar, a really kinky black-and-white maid costume from Japan. Ooooh la lah!! OK, I promised not to post any of those pics on the blog, but we took turns trying the costume on and the other 2 were so Kawai!! I, on the other hand, looked like a giant buffalo trying to squeeze into cinderella's frocks. And YX was such a great help that day, she coordinated the entire BBQ food etc, leaving me with free time for studying - thanks soooo much!!!!!
First off, I apologise for the poor photo quality - I had little time to spare for photography, and had a smudgy fish tank glass as well.
See anything erm .. different?
A closer look:
And even closer - these fish are odd eh? Razor fish, they are called. They swim upside down, amongst the spines of sea urchins as camouflage.
A couple of cheap-o leather corals I bought - cheap, but so pretty!
And finally, for Monty - this might interest you:
Very erm ... risky purchases today, if you didn't know me better, you'd think I was a reef noobie. But Yx liked both of them, and I figured I might as well give them a try - mandarin fish are just as notorious, often starving to death in the aquarium, but mine's eating frozen mysis shrimp and has been with me since forever. (touch a hell lot of wood) Razorfish supposedly take only live, microscopic food but I'm hopeful - they not only pick stuff off the clumps of seaweed in the tank, but they take frozen cyclops as well!
The crinoid is another matter altogether. Hmmmmmmmm. I'm now periodically adding frozen oyster eggs as zooplankton, hopefully the feather star filters that out and eats them. (Yes, the freezer is full of surprising horrors - frozen worms, oyster eggs, shrump, minced fish, lobster eggs, to name a selection. It's a wonder my parents haven't thrown me out by now. I won't even start describing the fridge...) Monty, have you any idea about what crinoids eat? The feather star's been crawling all over the tank and found a nice spot at the bottom where it seems to like. Hope it survives, it's so pretty.
1. Get that bitch of a UROP off my back - done 2. Today: The See-How-Much-You-Don't-Know OSCE 3. Today: The Do-You-Know-Your-CT-Scans-And-Surgical-Anatomy Clinical test 4. Today: The "ice-skating expert" falls hard on his arse. Or, if #2 and #3 fall through (see above), the "ice-skating expert" commits suicide by shoving ice up his arse. 5. Tonight: I'm so done with GS. It's too late, time to move on. Tie it all up. 6. Weekend: The chronic diseases - DM, HTN, COPD 7. Weekend: Murmurs at my fingertips. 8. Weekend: Short case - Neurology
Get the nastier things away first.
Psychosis is rapidly setting in - quick! Someone shoot a blowdart of haloperidol and diazepam at me and cart me screaming and flailing into Buangkok Green Medical Park! (Be kind and give me some loperamide for stress diarrhoea while you're at it, please)
As per my grouses today, it brings so glaringly to light how different some people are. Maybe it's the cultural difference of where we came from, school-wise; you somehow don't see this from where *I* came from.
And someone said something very offensive today. Not in the same way this would have been offensive to another person, but that the person had absolutely no right to make comments like this. To you, it was a sentence - the first greeting when I bumped into you today, actually, without a "Hi" - but to me, LOL, to me it just brought your status a notch lower in my eyes. FYI, I think most lowly of certain stereotypes - everyone drinks punch, so I drink that too; everyone plays football, and that I do as well; everyone goes to the gym, and I do that too. Oh, how cool is that? ROFLMFAO. And take an encore. Take football for example. No offence to my friends who do enjoy the game, but for what it's worth, I don't think idolising OTHER people and watching their every move and shouting at the TV as if you could direct their thoughts and intents is oh-so-sophisticated. If you're good enough to make it to the national team (which isn't saying much at all), fair enough. But chances are, you're just going to get stuck playing your awful recreational games every few sundays, waking at odd times to catch games and thinking that it's oh-so-cool, and checking on match commentaries on websites. In short, you'll always be that wannabe. I'm just making an example out of certain stereotyped games, but the point is - if you want to be something, you jolly well be the best at it; or good enough at it in any case. And even without being anywhere near the best, your sheer arrogance oozes through without you knowing it.
If you're happy spending your life chasing stereotypes - i.e. what a million other people are - and not working to be that unique deal that's just you, well, good for you. And to be the nice guy that I am, I just hope that you'll die enjoying life this way, and not realise at the end of 60 years that this wasn't what you wanted at all.
But as for me, I'm afraid, I'm looking for something that's just a little more extraordinary than that in a friend. p.s. Monty: Alas, we were indeed luridly optimistic about some individuals' maturities. Not unexpected, but I nonetheless kept hope in my heart - and was spetacularly let down. So now we know.
Right. That was an uncharacteristic splash of bile, venom and acid on this innocent little blog. Just a few photos of the sky again, it's been so cloudless these few nights, the photos are getting quite spectacular. Mind, these are done without magnification of any kind, although I'm drooling over some sexy electronic telescopes that I can absolutely NOT afford. =p
A crop of the constellation Orion - the straight line in the middle with 3 stars is Orion's belt, left elbow at 12 O'clock position, right knee at 6 O'clock position. Bellatrix, the brightest star in this constellation, takes up the position of Orion's left elbow and appears slightly reddish. Just below Orion's belt are the 3 stars pointing towards 7 O'clock - Orion's sword. The slightly blurry one in the middle of the 3 is the Orion nebula (Messier 42), which isn't a star at all but a cloud of gas and dust where new stars are being formed.
Stars just overhead: Backdropped against the roof of my house (bottom right) is part of the sky bearing the constellations Canis Major and part of Lepus. The brightest, pale blue star you see is Sirius, part of Canis Major and the brightest object in the night sky at this time of the year.
The Great Dog: A fair representation of what can be observed with a keen naked eye - Canis Major in its entirety, and most part of Lepus. If you don't know what these look like, THIS might help - see if you can actually compare it to my photo!
And now, presenting my favourite work so far =) Exact same picture, tweaked a little to cause a more diffuse glow to the stars (to accentuate their size). It's nice, since the subtle differences in star colour can be seen, and it's kinda 3D-ish. The big blue star in the middle is Sirius.
Right, that's it. FINALLY completed the stupid UROP report, going to email prof later today (too traumatic to do this all at once) and tell him I'm supposed to submit to him.
Prof: "So they want us to mark this?" Me: "Actually, I dunno ..."
One's cute, two's fun, three's amazing, 17 is ... *Shudder*
Just separated the 3 biggest ones out, cos they are large enough to eat the other babies. Shall see if any of my sisters want to adopt the 3, if not, I'll just let them loose in my plants' water trays.
In hardly the space of 1 day, the number of baby Triops has exploded from 2 to 13!! Right now there are 3 biggish ones, the rest are newly-hatched. Not sure if the larger 3 will end up cannibalising them though. A few of these 13 came from residual eggs in the original tank, but the vast majority were unplanned babies - story below.
I first separated relatively-pure eggs a week or 2 ago, from the main tank. These were siphoned from the sand in the tank, placed in a petri dish and swirled. The lighter eggs separated from the sand and were deposited in the centre from centripedal forces, and were again siphoned out and the process repeated until I managed to get pure eggs with a few grains of sand. These were placed in a CSF culture bottle (=p) with some of the old tank water. I intended to let these eggs dry out slowly (as opposed to my previous batches of eggs, which I dried out in the space of 2 days), but I left the cap on!
No hatchings were observed in the last week, probably due to the anoxic conditions in the tube. However, I remembered leaving the cap on and wanted to let the water evaporate, so I removed the cap a couple of days ago. I suppose the sudden oxygenation of the water triggered the mass hatching. = Oh well .. so many eggs, might as well use up some! Still have a small bottle of ~100 pure eggs and 3 zip-loc bags of egg-sand mix - anyone else want these? Gonna pass hypoC's to him soon, heehee!
Spent a hell lot of time today editing my UROP report ... OMG, I have only 3 references for my entire paper!!!!!!!! ARGHH!!!! EW, have you finished with yours yet? This is seriously THE LAST THING anyone would want to do right now, and I'm trying to get it totally out of the way asap.
To end the post, here are some shots I took over the weekend. The constellation Orion was in such splendour, and this constellation has such particular meaning for me =)
First shot is that of Orion itself, you can clearly see the characteristic square that the 4 brightest stars form, and the famous Orion's Belt made up of 3 straight-linking stars in the middle. Just below the Belt (to the right, in the photo) are the other 2 stars (actually, one of them is really a nebula) that make up Orion's sword in this constellation.
Next, as per my custom, an enhanced image of the same constellation but with a 25-second exposure and post-production processing. OMG, I never knew there were so many other stars around this constellation - try and see if you can make out the original Orion amongst all the stars!
And finally, a more perspective shot showing Orion to the upper left corner, and a really bright object in the middle (just to the right of the spike of light from streetlamps). It's easily the brightest star at night right now, and I'm very much inclined to think that this is, in fact, the planet Venus. I didn't look up the star charts on that night though, so don't take my word for it.
*Update* I just checked it up, that bright star is in fact Sirius, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, part of the constellation Canis Major. Interestingly, it can be identified by tracing through the straight line formed by Orion's belt!
This is my second African lungfish to date, the last time I kept one was 8 years ago and that chap was HUGE. About the length of my fingertips to my elbows, and ate $1 worth of feeder fish every week.
YX named this one Cookie, but she has yet to see it. It's really small though, as you can see - about the size of a AAA battery. Best thing is, it eats frozen bloodworms, so no more gory fish-eating!
The ultra-nice bracelet that YX made for my mom .. this is her most complex piece so far, and it took 2 retries and 3 days before it's finally made. But wow! Mom's been wearing it consecutively for the last 2 days. =) The photo still doesn't do it justice.
OMG, I can't believe myself - I woke up so late today, I missed seeing patients and missed an OSCE lecture!!! OMG! Feeling extremely upset about myself right now.
And Brownie's ill too .. lethargic, with diarrhoea. =( Hope he gets well quickly, I don't like to see him ill like that. I want him to eat more food - he even refused to eat the slab of butter I cut for him last night, which was a first. He lives for butter.
Got XW 3 magic tricks for her birthday present yesterday, YX chose them. One of them's really cool, the cards can change sizes! Hahaha. Cheap thrills ...
Wei's green tea cake and the present that Yx wrapped (she refused to let me wrap them. Not that I want to anyway, mine always end up looking like bananas from outer space.)
I left the empty tank standing on the table, intending to let the tank slowly dry out to mimick the drought season in nature. Triops eggs aren't SUPPOSED to hatch without a period of drying first, it's a survival mechanism to ensure that eggs don't start hatching in drying-up pools which may cause the babies to die before they reach adulthood. For some really odd reason though, I found 2 babies in the tank today! Once again, one of them was slightly larger than the other (Mr. Meanass' progeny, no doubt about it!)
Well, I'm seriously not into pampering these crustaceans right now, with all these troubles I'm already struggling with. So I'll just leave them alone for now, and pop in a flake or 2 of food once every couple of days for them. Thinking of hatching a batch of eggs now though, so that I can place a tank of them in the living room for CNY - it'll be a nice conversation piece.
It's once again Macworld time of the year, and .. Arghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Has onyone seen THIS yet?
It's probably going to be released here only in 2008, but that's good - allows time for all the debugging to go on in the UK and states first before we receive a seamless product (hopefully). Even after using Windows Mobile for only several days, I'm already so looking forward to having Mac OS on a PDA phone. They seriously should release the OS separately as well, so that other unfortunate phone manufacturers can at least have the option of using alternative OSes. But I doubt it - they're selling the iPhone as-is, together with the 4GB or 8GB hardware. Love it that they're using Safari though - it's definitely no Firefox, but at least Safari in this phone claims to display NORMAL webpages properly. Currently on the Win Mobile IE, only PDA-enabled webpages load properly - the normal stuff end up all warped and dis-formatted.
Some features I wished the iPhone would have though:
1) A mini-SD card slot (yes, not a micro SD) - would be nice to be able to expand the capacity from 8GB onwards, especially when the iPhone is supposed to store stuff like hundreds of photos and songs too. 8GB is seriously a tad too little.
2) New programs that can be installed, and newly-formatted for the iPhone format. Stuff like Office for Mac, for example. And I'm still tapping my feet waiting for Firefox for mobile devices to appear. = 3) Haha .. this is asking for too much. A slide-out QWERTY keyboard is seriously a boon for me, guys are awfully clumsy at using a stylus (iPhone uses fingers, BTW .. odd). It'd go against the phone's 1-button design though, so once again, I doubt this feature would appear.
4) Voice-to-text software. Oh, utopia! Turn it on for lectures, and you get instant notes, lol! But knowing the efficacy of these software and the amount of medical jargon.. hmmm. Probably end up with the strangest sentences like, "The risk factors for gas strict car cinema include previous gas-wrecked tummy" (instead of "the risk factors for gastric carcinoma include previous gastrectomy) Bleargh. We've still a long way to go before this happens.
5) The one thing I really, really like about Win Mobile is that on the display page (called "Today") the next upcoming appointments are listed, and disappear as the scheduled event ends. I'm not sure if iCal on the iPhone will do this, but that's one great feature they should have.
6) Remote peripherals (this applies to all handphones). A small camera that masquerades as a plug-in handphone earphone, clips onto the front of your shirt, and there! No need to fish out the gigantic phone and announce to the world that you're just about to take candid shots, or take photo of really nice furniture at the mall without feeling embarassed. I'm sure this, if implemented, will incite vigorous flaming about misuse. =( Stupid idiots who spoil everything.
OK, shall stop here and start studying a little before school. Happy drooling, everone!
Alas, what was inevitable has come to pass. Triops have naturally very short lives, an adaptation to living in temporary flood pools in deserts, but I was kinda hoping they'd live much longer than the postulated 4 weeks written on the packet.
RIP, Mr. Meanass. 12/12/06 - 8/01/07 Departed to be with the big mud pond in the sky at 1am, 8/01/07 You were mean, and really big, but will be sorely missed.
RIP, Surviver. Surviver's last moments, hours before he passed on.
12/12/06-8/01/07 Departed to be with the big mud pond in the sky sometime after 1am, 8/01/07 and we know you will still be brilliant - You were always meant to be the surviver!
I've preserved the both of them in formaldehyde, gonna buy a nice display "coffin" for them! OK, this is getting so excessive. At least I've got hundreds of eggs to hatch next time! Meanass Jr. and Surviver Jr. =D
I'm getting REALLY stressed up now, have a mid-posting test today. Eww. Pray hard for me, I hope I don't make a complete fool of myself. So many things have been happening to some friends, and so much self-doubt - which, at this point of time, is such a nasty thing to happen. At the same time, a friend's just back from a loooong trip to Japan, so all's good.
So drained from studying, and from having a poor retension rate!! I've been getting the strangest responses from friends who wonder why we start studying so early, when the exams are in March. HELLO. It's not 6 months' worth of stuff we need to go through - it's FIVE YEARS' worth.
OK, obviously in a crabby mood right now.
Anyway, just got a new toy!!!!! OMG, this is sin. So many new things in the span of 1 year.
Here we go, some pics of a (relatively) new shop at Makansutra! It's the last stall on the row, nearer the sea beside the Esplanade. The pots are so pretty!!
The soup comes in either chicken or tom yam (which, being rather authentic, was a little too adventurous for me, but mom ejoyed it immensely) and costs around $8 per person. But there's more to it than meets the eye! Once you get rid of the pot, you end up with an outdoors hawker BBQ!
The pork ribs were a favourite, it's supposed to be bak kut teh flavoured but the way it sizzles on the grill ... yum!
Just a tad more night photorgraphy: 10-second exposure of mom hunting for slugs in the garden last night, using a white LED torch. It's become her hobby - we even made a documentary of the slug-hunting a few nights ago!
Well, technically not, since there should have been a nice visible moon when the clock struck 12 last night.
Froggy was set to a 30-second exposure time while on a tripod, so that it could take in as much light as possible at 1am today. The only downside was, the long exposure also took in the moving clouds. It's kinda nice in a way, it gives the whole picture a dynamic feeling while the framing of the trees and plant racks on the bottom left and right were obviously stationary. Enjoy!
What we're missing out on
As each year goes by, I find myself taking more and more for granted. Those lovely 10-second in-limbo periods, for instance, when spontaneously, irresistably, refreshingly I get the euphoria of just being alive. Somewhere out there, someone's grieving, someone's experiencing the terror of their lives, someone's just about to end it all.
Living in this light-polluted city, I think precious few know of the wonders that exist every second, but are obscured by the most mundane of things.
A single star, visible to the naked eye - 15 second exposure. The constellation Orion is to 2 O'clock from this star in the picture (not seen, obscured by clouds)
And now, an enhancement of the exact same shot. The same picture, with saturation brought up and colour temperature shifted towards blue (to get rid of the familiar orange tinge of our skies, undoubtedly the work of our millions of streetlamps and incinerators)
Viola! Our hidden treasures.
Hope you all enjoyed these pics as much as I did taking them, and musing over the insignificant intricacies in life.
First of all, here's wishing everyone a very happy 2007 ahead indeed! I was so inclined to do a pictoral run-through of what transpired over the last year, but then decided otherwise .. it might get too traumatising. This New Year hardly seemed a cause for celebration, unfortunately, since I'm so bogged down with the upcoming exams and all, but hey - I did get some fun!
Starting from post-Xmas:
Yx helping me change the Triops' water - thanks!!!!!!!!!
And my yummy Xmas present! =D This stuff is amazing - it's the nicest-looking CD box ever, and the lid plops open when you depress the front!
And next - what became of the gingerbread house:
XX brought back these tiny gingerbread figurines that looked oh-so-nice with the house
And Dad promptly ate up half the roof later that night, and his furry little accomplice ate a chunk of it too:
Earlier on, the naughty little boy was grouchy and subdued after a bath. "I hate baths!! Why must I have baths??!?"
A little update on the Triops (Day 21 - !!!!!) They've been really busy laying eggs, and are still moulting every couple of days. I bought some new flake food for the both of them, and they loved it! Met HypoC, Josh and Stan in school the other day (while I was attemping to flee an OSCE session) and muahahahaha ... finally, someone who I can trust with my Triops eggs!! HypoC, got to find a day to pass them to you, then must update your blog about them hor! Here's a photo of Survivor digging the soil and laying eggs.
And one of the most memorable events that marked the end of the year - Nepenthes veitchii finally pitchered! For those of you wondering why I'm so excited about this - this horrid plant has been BARREN for the last four years. FOUR! And all of a sudden, 3 pitchers! It's the only one of its kind locally (being genetically distinct for sure, it is not a tissue cultured plant) and this pitchering event was really exciting.
Next up, a little artistic showcase: Yx's handiwork! Alas, this is but one of the 4 bead thingies that she's been working on. I'm glad she picked up a hobby! For one, it's so nice to have someone quietly around while I'm working hard (read: no more yakking, and none of that "I'm bored!!!" grousing =p ). And, it's so much easier to buy presents for people who do have hobbies, eh? I'm thinking of things like bead books, beads, wires, scissors and such. And perhaps, needles and thread? This is part of a necklace that she made:
~~~ New Year's Eve ~~~
Mom and Dad were out for a private countdown party, while XX and bf were at the club having the same also (Yx and I know enough about the club's countdowns to avoid it like a hundred half-naked axemen chasing us). So, the rest of us decided to troop down to the new house to get ourselves a bbq. What a horror!
First, the instant disposable BBQ pit REFUSED to light up. Yx and I had wonderful times with this stuff in Sentosa, but somehow the set that was bought was either wet or defective, and all we got were 2 or 3 faintly-burning embers. In the end, Yx and I resorted to buying lighter fluid, dousing the charcoal with it and causing mini-explosions that well .. worked in the end. Almost ended up burning the table though, and some of the lighter fluid got onto my shirt too. XX later got bored at the club and joined us. Had a few rounds of mini mahjong! Alas, while they were playing I spent half the time readin GS stuff .. pancreatitis.
The new house has been inspected by the Brownie and has passed (i.e. it's not haunted) - indeed, the garden's now one of his favourite playgrounds. He joined in the NYE festivities too! And proceeded shortly after this shot to bark at people and cats walking past the house.
~~~ New Year's Day ~~~ 1 JAN 2007
Happy Anniversary, yx!
I went off tradition this year - I usually cook for the anniversary, but with all the stuff that's been happening, I ended up having a Tiramisu delivered instead. It was great!!
