across the horizon

who needs a countdown

2007-09-10T15:15:00.000+01:00

i found out today that chewing gum is now sold in singapore. the non-medicinal type of chewing gum. i also found out you have your ic number and name recorded whenever you buy a packet.

it's rather silly thinking about it. i guess there's the concern of vandalism involving chewing gum which is more troublesome and destructive than most. but it also means that it's easier to buy cigerettes than it is to buy chewing gum. surely something's wrong with that.

we're all made of carbon

2007-08-30T16:32:00.000+01:00

can't wait for this to come! :) it's one of the tshirt designs i got from threadless, wonder if i could get an entire periodic table illustrated this way... i guess the esoteric ones like unununium will be a little hard to picture.

in my inbox this morning...

2007-08-28T13:54:00.001+01:00

the threadless 10 dollar sale!

been waiting for this since charlene introduced me to the website in may. i'd been keeping a list of tshirts i found in the catalogue that i would have liked to get. had to pick 3 from the list (any more would have been ridiculous i think) and they're on their way! :)

supper at fong seng

2007-08-23T03:56:00.001+01:00

the night before gillian flew off, one of those sure signs that summer is coming to an end.

recurring feelings of not having spent enough time with everyone and not having soaked in enough of singapore to last me another year. three more weeks to going back, then three months before being back for christmas :)

back from kunming and soon off to london

2007-08-17T06:51:00.000+01:00

been back from kunming for a week and made arrangements for the rugby world cup. rugby means leaving for london then lyon on the september 13th, which works out to excitement and reluctance to cut short summer in singapore.

third and final year doesn't seem to diminish the desire to come back during the holidays, but it does add urgency to the want to see more of the uk and europe. bah. so far, greece is lined up for june with xiao en after the end of term :)

pictures from the one and a half weeks in kunming:

a view from xishan of kunming (with nifty highway systems which remind me of something from a kid with a set of road tracks) and dian chi, a -huge- lake which could probably fit kunming into it.

photos from the camp. my class, the team of teachers the rest from south korea and a photo from the park in yunnan university.

from xishan: chairlift from the base station / dian chi / the forest on xishan on the way up / a doorway along the footpath on the way down / a huge mirror in the middle of nowhere / the grotto that took me a while to waddle down / a wind up tractor / packed busride / temple along the route down on the face of xishan

motorcycle in the market / baby girl by the sidewalk / horse by the roadside / guo qiao mi sian (which translates literally to across the bridge rice noodles) / an old man in the park flying a kite (always thought those umbrella hats were so useful) / my favourite er kuai stall / two old men taking a walk in the park / an old lady at the flower wholesale market / an alleyway (i think they knew i was taking their photo)

my favourite photo, though not my favourite er kuai shop. it's got youtiao with sweet peanut sauce wrapped up in a flat rice cake, all warm and nice and gooey :)

delifrance in klia

2007-07-29T01:59:00.000+01:00

klia, which i took about half an hour to figure out, is the acronym for kuala lumpur international airport.

delifrance in klia does not have palatable smoked turkey, but it does have nice tables and a more laid back staff which probably won't chase me out too soon. should try making my drink last too :)

the connecting flight to kunming for delayed by about 4 hours, so i'm occupying myself till lunchtime. the flight from singapore to kl is -short-, probably half an hour that you're in the air. granted, it was half an hour of amazing sleep, but the one bit i was awake and peered out of the window as we were landing, there were green clumps of palm trees (i think they were palm trees) which creates this effect of green clumping quite unlike the normal green massing you see from the plane.

shoulda taken a photo but all i had was my phone which was meant to be switched off in flight.

that kept me occupied for 10 minutes, this last post.

one thing kl's airport has that changi doesn't is an open wireless network. the network in changi requires either a starhub username or a wireless@sg username. which is all good, except you need to go online to register for a wireless@sg username and password, which you need to get online. i suppose the simpler solution would have been to register for it at home :)

hey, that's something i could try doing now! :)

hommmmme! :)

2007-07-08T13:47:00.000+01:00

i'm home! or i have been for a while.

since the last post (i seem to start with that often), there's been the exams, crazy packing, subdued surprise, bintan, bumming, coconut candy, fish's birthday, lots of bumming, and more bumming.

getting lazy typing, so here's some photos. tolkien's gown is a book i just borrowed from the library by rick gekloski. it's about a rare book dealer and short stories about the history of first edition books, or their authors, which he has dealt in. i recommend it :) it's up to remind me to get it if i ever run across it.

us at bintan

the beach at bintan lagoon resort

tolkien's gown, rick gekoski

2007-05-08T23:46:00.000+01:00

hah! you'll never believe what i found. it all started with looking for the natural abundance of 35Cl and 37Cl (yeah, you'll probably want to skip over this part) and the website i was directed to had advertisements for chemistry clothing.

so here comes the best part, they have periodic table -socks-. how cool is that?? they aren't particularly nice, but the idea is rather amazing don't you think? :D i told xiao en this over skype and she told me it's rather geeky. no plans to buy em, would never wear them, but here's a picture of them :)

there're normal stuff too, like chocolate molecule tshirts (which made me think immediately of fish :P) and periodic table cups/thermos flasks/mousepads. this sparked off a search for other websites selling chemistry type things and some have rather good prints like a tshirt with 'heisenberg may have been here'. also comes on handbags, pullovers for small dogs, bibs and sweaters. bah, go figure :P

2007-03-23T09:05:00.001Z

it's the last friday of term!! :)

2007-03-20T14:45:00.000Z

for some reason i can't quite figure out, i'm feeling like i have a lot less work to do today. maybe it's delusion setting in, xiao en tells me i'm really good at that ;)

this isn't going to make much of a post, a bunch of photos taken over the last few weeks/minutes of things seen around/on my walk to school/in school. potential evidence for claims that spring is here, if one were to discount the near-zero temperatures and snow (yes, snow, in march) yesterday.

from the snow of a few months ago. there was enough this year to (almost) carpet the queen's lawn. something's odd about the bluetooth between my laptop and handphone, so some of the pictures have terrible dimensions and resolution.

photos below are from my walk back home from school. there's this nice maze of backroads that lets me avoid the main road. that works out to less traffic lights and less fumes :)
yeah, i don't think it looks like it's from london either. looks like something you'd see lining the driveway of a beach resort somewhere warm.

last lot's from class. the one in the lt is from klement messing with my phone, the scribbly one's me trying to validate all the copying i did in today's tutorial. if one can't understand it, at least one can post it online ;)

this one's been looping since thursday

2007-03-10T13:20:00.000Z

all i once held dear, built my life upon
all this world reveres and wars to own
all i once thought gain i have counted loss
spent and worthless now compared to this

knowing you, Jesus
knowing you, there is no greater thing
you're my all, you're the best
you're my joy, my righteousness
and i love you Lord

now my heart's desire is to know you more
to be found in you and known as yours
to possess by faith what i could not earn
all-surpassing gift of righteousness

2007-03-09T21:47:00.001Z

i got that white solid! :)

2007-03-03T23:42:00.000Z

i'm meant to be writing a lab report, really, i am. but this is way more interesting :)

a total lunar eclipse! :) spent the last 10 minutes standing by the window with the lights off trying to spot the moon. it's red tonight (not the bright orange bbc predicted, but still very neat) because the earth is right between it and the sun, resulting in the only light reaching the moon's surface being that reflected off the earth and refracted through the earth's upper atmosphere.

on a what's-been-for-lunch/dinner note, pancakes with stir fried chicken! doesn't taste as odd as it sounds, more crepe like than pancakes. then there was pizza last night, which looked more like lagsana and tasted more like copious amounts of tomata sauce mixed in cheese with a token layer of sticky (not intended) crust at the bottom. must be the end of term, or the looming deadlines, that's making time spent in the kitchen look so enticing ;)

road trip! :)

2007-02-26T18:31:00.000Z

last saturday. london, cantebury, dover, a bit of beach somewhere round folkstone, hastings, london. loads and loads of fun! (though i was sleeping in the backseat for most of it and bing wen and jamin did most of the work driving and navigating)

so, from left to right, top down: xiao en and charlene planning the route / bing wen the driver / cantebury cathedral (it was closing early cos of scout's day, and we were cheapo not wanting to pay. dropped into starbucks and found its back window looked right onto the cathedral! :D) / a bit of english countryside off the a2 / group photo, with the camera propped on the roof of the car on a tripod. the sea fades into the sky in the horizon, neat huh :) / the windblown shrubs on the white cliffs of dover / the wind blown us on the white cliffs of dover / the white cliffs (limestone, calcium carbonate) of dover / fish and chips (or fish and roe) at hastings, a seaside town known for its pier and arcades.

wound up playing what-reminds-you-of-singapore games (like nasilemakwaychapopiahorfun...) and singing the medley of national day songs (it's slightly scary, being able to remember the whole medley they play at the end of the parade). which then became disney songs (they rule!) then any songs that a critical mass of us knew how to sing/hum.

in the meanwhile, happy birthday wei shan in advanced! :) and it's back to lab reports on molybdenum....oooooh :P

2007-02-10T15:29:00.000Z

phew. just back from a mean game of squash with bing wen and charlene at wilson house where i ran into lixin who's down for the weekend too. the computers hanging/crashing/generally-failing-to-work this week bought us one more report free weekend and with some luck, we'll get the next one off too! :)

last weekend was blackpool for the national student conference. twas a good time away from the routine that comes with london, time away from the laptop and every single one of its distractions, time away from thoughts of 'should-i-start-the-report-this-weekend?'. time to sit down and think about how things have been going with God and get round to righting the stuff that wasn't. it's amazing how people we need are placed right there, without us even realising till everything falls perfectly into place.

true to form, some photos from the last 5 weeks of term (cos i've been -clearing up my harddrive- and getting people to transfer the photos). and because they're from the last 5 weeks, there's not much of an order to them.

first week this term, when joshua dropped in on the last leg of his trip round europe. also the night i was thoroughly thrashed at pepsi-cola.

sunset (which in winter over here probably means 4ish in the afternoon).

ahhhh, my favourite photo of this bunch! dark chocolate + milk chocolate + castor sugar + cream over a bowl of warm water. topping for the mocha chocolate brownie of two weeks ago.

when it snowed a couple weeks back. according to the forecast, there was a respectable 2 hours of snow just before sunrise. much more respectable than the 15 minutes worth we got last year. and in the true spirit of a wonky warm winter (wow, the alliteration :P), it snowed a whole morning on thursday. a whole morning. there's a photo of the lawn in school, now if only it would cooperate in being transferred out of my phone.

2007-01-31T16:32:00.000Z

so, i figure i can just about squeeze one more post in before february comes around. a laid back week culminating in a -free wednesday afternoon- (now when was the last time i remember having that?). baked again earlier this week - decided to veer off the beaten chocolate track and tried ginger cheesecake. it's got a ginger biscuit based base (with about 6 times the amount of cinammon recommended in the recipe), crystallised ginger bits in the cake and its meant to have ginger bits as a topping (which isn't to be, since i tried spreading whipped cream on a hot cake. for future reference, generally not advisable).

today's an absolutely amazing day, given it's london and given its meant to be winter. cool, windy, crisp, clear, bright, sunny. can't ask for anymore. was walking through kensington gardens on the way to comm lunch in bayswater in some sort of dazed wonderment at perfect days like these :) and yes, i took a photo (plus bare trees, now how long has it been since i've posted one of those? ;)
and a photo from the first week of christmas holidays last year, while wondering round the thames with wei li.

2007-01-23T22:06:00.000Z

you know you're bored when walking back from class, you start wondering what you could bake that afternoon (mocha brownie, can taste the orange, but not the coffee; and there was the incident of the exploding butter in the microwave - opening the microwave after hearing the bang to find butter dripping off the walls, door and roof was almost funny enough not to require hindsight). you know you're really bored when you find yourself reading group descriptions in facebook, then start wondering if you ought to blog some really funny ones :P this one's off a group called 'you know you're at imperial when...'

You spend half of the time at the pub arguing about whether infinity is an integer, or not.

You spend half of the walk back arguing about some other random maths question.

You find graffiti in the toilets that consists of a mathematical joke.

You try to make a mathematical joke and someone corrects you.

You are willing to brave English weather, in order to get to the Sandwich Shop, or some other establishment that sells real food. (Note: do not try the "double Gloucester" at the JCR- if I had the choice between having one or not eating for a week, I would happily choose the latter).

Nearly everyone's handwriting is absolutely awful. That usually includes yourself, too.

You have met more left-handed people here than you had in your entire pre-imperial life.

You come to realise that biology is chemistry, chemistry is physics, physics is maths and maths is just uhhmmm confusing?

Your ability to polish off up to 10 books a week just vanishes. (*ARGH*! how do I get it back?)

You decide that there are two kinds of people: the medics and the non-medics. If you are a medic, this becomes: the medics and those who wish they were medics.

Your lecturers can integrate ridiculous things, but cannot spell, or use apostrophes correctly to save their lives. The same applies for making the distinction between "loose" and "lose".

Despite your uphill struggle to remain normal and cool, you begin to find electron jokes funny.

Ever so often you are evacuated from the building you are in, because of a fire alert/ bomb scare/ a chemical spill.

The aforementioned bomb scare usually turns out to have been caused by something really stupid, such as an unmarked package containing lightbulbs...

You lose braincells, banging your head on the desk, trying to figure out how a certain answer was obtained, just to find out later that your lecturer left out a minus sign.

You decide that different departments have different ways of counting:
Biologist: 1,2,3, many
Compsci: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d, e, f, 10

you get the drift.

You can sometimes make an educated guess as to which department someone is from, by just looking at them. This is of course easy if the person in question has bottle-bottom glasses, spindely arms and skin that looks like it has never come into direct contact with sunlight. In this case you guess compsci.

you get the vague impression that the person who wrote this is from compsci? :P

more random stuff. a lecture on photochemistry last week with analogies of lazy squirrels having to jump between branches only when the wind blows the branches to the right levels which make the jump easiest. the quantum version of this example being that the squirrel is fitted with a jet booster that when ignited will project the squirrel a fixed distance upwards, a distance which is dependent on the model of the jet booster and beyond the control of the squirrel.

well, i guess it was time for a geeky post :)

2007-01-12T18:35:00.000Z

done! finished! nooooo more! :) (least for the next few months till june)

oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, this feels much more like the holidays than the last three weeks ever since christmas did. cancalled class on monday (all -2- hours of cancelled class) means i've got myself a long-ish weekend ahead. yay! for the little things, i remain thankful.

everyone's back home, the cooking rota is slowly taking shape again, and the dates on my timetable are looking less far off; you can just about feel term grinding to a start. still, for this weekend, i'm going to have a holiday :)

p.s. the washing machine died last night. it makes very nasal (if it had a nose) gurgling sort of noises when it's trying to spin the clothes. come to think of it, it might not be completely spoilt, just less thorough and...with a new penchant to produce sopping wet clothes.

2007-01-10T21:25:00.000Z

there should be a new law of the universe...something about how blogging is so much more appealing when one is meant to be studying.

2 down 1 to go! i'm more done than i'm not done! :)

i like this new blogger thing

2007-01-01T23:07:00.000Z

i've replied all my emails. i've cleaned out my room (well, sort of, ning han still walked in, stopped short and told me i have the messiest room in the house. with a room right next to jamin and bing wen's, looking neat's tough). i've rewatched episodes of house. i've stashed my portable hard drive to stop rewatching episodes of house. i've found season 3 episodes of house on daily motion. i'm thinking of stashing my laptop to stop watching season 3 episodes of house.

now, if only that list would include something along the lines of 'i've managed to study continuously for a period of more than 1 hour'.

oh, yeah, you can also add 'i've redid the template of my blog along with links and chatterbox and explored the nooks of the new google blogger'.

judging from the date of the last post, i owe a month long account of december. it was great, minus the first bit of maniacally writing lab reports, and minus the current bit of finding ways to trick myself into studying. that leaves the week leading up to christmas spent part in london, part in cambridge, part in brussels and part in brughes. that bit was great :) photos at zoto. (and you can add 'uploaded holiday photos' to the list as well)

maybe it's got to do with the reflective mood the end of a year brings, sunday's sermon had a quality of resonance i've missed for a while.

be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. - 1 thessalonians 5:16-18

poof, term one

2006-12-06T22:45:00.000Z

all right, so it's been a little bit more than a month. a little bit more than a bit. time flies, something i've said too much and realised too little of recently.

in the time since the last post, i've... been to oxford, milan and back, watched a football game in milan (intermilan and siena, -cool- huh!), started and finished labs.

watched mary poppins, been to the laundromat to dry bedsheets while feeling as though i'd stepped into an episode of friends (the one with the east german laundry detergent), discussed the relative merits of wimpy rotary evaporators in the lab and their respective ability to dry out toluene without chomping up a sample.

had my gloves sucked into the vent of a vaccuum oven, jinx the nice mild weather by mentioning how nice and mild it was for this time of the year, followed by said weather turn freeeezing in the next few days, teamed up with xiao en to get people at home started on the 'owe-me-coke' game.

made plans for the christmas holidays, written two lab reports, done a couple of problem sheets and too many tutorials to remember, -and- wish the christmas holidays were here for far too many times than i care to remember.

yup, that's about it. then there's today, which is what got me into a post-ing mood. as an early birthday celebration for charlene and me, we had dinner at goldmine (free soup, nearly identical to the one served in chinatown before watching mart poppins. we're starting to suspect there's a london-chinese-restaurant wholesaler which recently introduced 'instant free soup for starters, pork lotus, chicken feet and lots of random other stuff').

on coming home, unknown to charlene and me, plan b was unfolding. ;) with lots of scheming on xiao en, jamin and bing wens' parts, which included jamin preventing charlene from showering and bing wen closing the kitchen door in my face, they broke out chocolate cake! thanks! :D

which brings me back to the start of this post. time flies. it's december all ready. even with all the rationalising on why, how and when it flew, the fact remains that it has. and while on one hand i'm pretty happy that term seems to be zipping by at such a blinding, forgettable rate, there's this part of me realising that i'm nearing the halfway mark of uni, which is a lump of a thought. hitting the half way mark (which is sometime in the middle of next term) means that anytime after that, i'd have less time left to do what i want to do than i had before that. and that's...always a thought that puts things into perspective, and lately has started injecting some urgency into what's been a rather lazy sort of existence.

and to wind off with some photos (mostly nicked off jamin), since they always seem to go down well. :)

one month on. :)

2006-11-01T22:31:00.000Z

how is it that the days seem to pass quickly while the weeks slowly, but once hitting the one month mark, there's still the shock of 'no...it -can't- be one month already'. still, if there's anything that i miss less this year compared to the last one, it would be singapore food. seriously. we've had chicken rice, watercress soup, nasi lemak, chawanmushi, and tonight's latest addition to the menu, wan tan mee. my palette is getting spoilt...come to think of it, i probably ate less properly singaporean food in singapore than i've eaten in the last 3-4 weeks here. we're having the minced-meat-on-top-of-tou-fu dish on friday, need i say more? :)

speaking of which, it occurred to me that i ought to put some after-photos of my room up to quell any suspicions that we're -still- living like that.

the solution to too much wall space and an empty-feeling room? lots of photos and a wad of blue tack (actually it's white tack, er, white coloured blue tack). and a plant. two weeks and counting and it's still alive, even qualifies as flowering. i'd say we've properly settled into our new flat. :)

we're up and running

2006-10-20T13:21:00.000+01:00

and it's about time. i don't think i'm quite up to describing the state we were living in for two and a half weeks, it was like being refugees in our own home. suffice to say, the infamous wall is up (in a few months maybe, recounting how i got to watch a wall in our house being built will make good dinner conversation ;) ), my room looks like a room (as opposed to an obstacle course of an overturned sofa preceding a swamp of suitcases), i've power-screwdriver-ed my desk together (go try, very very fun :) ), and even got myself a plant.

words aren't quite up to the task of describing the mess we survived in, so here are some photos instead...

what was our living room

and that was my room, as well as charlene's and xiao en's
(that wedge of brown behind the sofa is the door, sofa=yellow splotch)

and the wall as it was getting built
term's starting, it's getting colder, the whole works are in motion again. i half thought that this year would be routine, having exhausted my first-times last year, but even regular random things like grocery shopping has a new twist when you think about going back to a home rather than a room. oh yes, the last thing i wanted to mention and what made me think of blogging, it's a nice sunny autumn day, rather reminiscent of the weather this time last year. though the rate at which trees on my path to school are balding is rather alarming. that, and only one life at all souls last night was really challenging. now's to make it count and properly digest it before it wisps out of my memory.

not counting down, not...

2006-09-25T01:02:00.000+01:00

despite my best attempts to not countdown, things like seeing the day you're marked to go back appear on the london weather forecast can be a real dampener. more happily, summer's been absolutely fantastic, thank you -everyone- for squeezing me into schedules for meals, bumming sessions, mahjong, or just random hullos. i think i just about managed my singapore fix for what i miss so much to last me the next 9 months. i must get round to blogging on a regular basis too...you know, getting back into routine and stuff. :) (stuff in the random other stuff sense, not the 'come shu, help me bring more of my -stuff- over from the other place'; after moving two weeks ago, i'm getting a little traumatised by boxes of -stuff- and the endless unpacking they inevitably require)

this is making my week

2006-09-08T02:36:00.000+01:00

tickets to the rugby world cup 2007 in france next year!! funny how an innocent lunch with lixin can end up in full fledged holiday planning for the last two weeks of my next summer break. and we get to watch new zealand, albiet playing the repechage (dictionary.com says: a practice amongst ladder competitions that allows participants that failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue to the next round), but the all blacks! playing! live! in the rugby -world cup-! i can't wait. :)

a month (more)

2006-08-27T16:04:00.000+01:00

a month means so many things. humph, i'm hoping the next one passes r e a l l y s l o w l y though. somehow, after looking forward so much to coming back for summer, it never crossed my mind that summer would actually have to come to an end. and this would be a really good place to put in something suitably philosophical about time passing and things going in full cycles, but all i can think of is psyching myself up to going back. one would think that having done all this before, the second time around would be a lot easier. but there isn't that numbing, blinding excitement that sort of drowned the anticipation of being away for so long that i had last year. this time around, you're sure of what going off means which ends up making what you're leaving behind that much clearer. all a little premature i suppose, considering i still have a month yet! :)

so...one more week of work, one more round of unpacking, one more (hopefully just one more) visit to the dentist, one more round of vaccinations. i'm getting pretty rusty at writing and organised rambling after blogging so sporadically in singapore, but pictures seem to do the trick most of the time; a bunch from the last couple of weeks (chronologically, i think).

audrey's birthday

gillian's farewell lunch

at the soup restaurant
and a song we sung at church what must have been at least a month ago. or more accurately, the chorus of the song.

i want to leave a legacy
how will they remember me?
did i choose to love?
did i point to You enough to make a mark on things?
i want to leave an offering
a child of mercy and grace who blessed Your name unapologetically
and leave that kind of legacy

there, it's updated

2006-08-05T02:47:00.000+01:00

all right, so it got boring seeing the same thing every time i needed a link from this page. i've been back over a month (gabbles, stammers, time should not be allowed to pass this quickly), and there's enough imperial related stuff going on for a little voice at the back of my mind to remind me that the summer hols aren't going to last forever.

on a much less whiny note, there's -finally- a decent photo of the three of us together! thanks audrey, for making us take all those photos ;)

and have i mentioned how much i love my work?

i want an english-german final

2006-06-27T16:02:00.000+01:00

watching the brazil-ghana game, i don't think that's going to happen with brazil in the competition. we were talking about supporting brazil over lunch on sunday at din tai fong, which i still maintain is a very cheapo thing to do - somehow supporting a team that's most likely to win sounds disgustingly self defeating. and even if ghana doesn't win this match, they'll probably find themselves with a new crowd of supporters after this match for their sheer spunk and gutsiness playing brazil.

after living at the very ulu end of sunset way for years, living near a main road has taken on new found convenience especially on oversleeping days. i love that the office is 15 minutes from my front door (15 minutes if i manage to lock the door on the first try, jay walk the main road and charge up the hill). love being able to do hands on work too - i never knew how much i never knew in the lab till today.

to wind off a very random post (which while writing i have watched three quarters of the brazil-ghana match and nodded off twice), some photos from last week's trip to berlin.

world cup fever! that might have been a pair of football boots hanging from a street lamp and the brandenburg gate with a screen as high as the gate transformed into a ginormous fanfest zone.

the holocaust memorial - over a 1000 concrete blocks forming a maze in the middle of the city

five chemists outside the reichstag - a timed shot, pretty decent huh!

back from berlin and back home

2006-06-23T09:43:00.000+01:00

i'm back home, what more can i say. nothing really gets round to describing the feeling of waving wildly to my family from the luggage belt after a 12 hour flight. surprisingly less jet lagged than i thought i would be - probably a result of many late nights in berlin and london this week. finding it tough to reconcile the fact that i finished my exams just last friday, went to berlin and back to london, then got home, all in less than a week.

oh yes, my miraculous experience at heathrow airport. pushing and pulling two pieces of luggage weighing a total of 50 kg up the escalator at the underground wasn't a very good idea. especially when the front one overbalanced and the back one tipped downwards, resulting in the luggage, and incidentally me, toppling down half the escalator before a young couple broke my fall. (no i didn't fall on them, they were probably braced watching me tumble down half the escalator.) the really unbelievable part is i got away unscathed, save a sore ankle which has never been very cooperative. that, and the fact that the lady at the check in counter didn't say anything about my overweight luggage. i'd even had a mini speech prepared for her. really, it's amazing to be reminded how God takes care of us even in the smallest ways.

berlin was stunning. it wasn't just the football fever, which was literally palpable, you could see, hear, touch, taste and smell it. the brandenburg gate had been turned into fan fest with a huge screen and stands erected and a mini gallery inside a football featuring the history of the tournament and the results of this world cup. football aside, germany's a city of contradictions, there's most obviously the east and the west which were put back together after nearly three decades of separation, then there's the historic side of the city, where history practically lingers in the buildings standing today, amid the very modern technology that is featured in everyday life.

the exams didn't kill me, but packing probably will

2006-06-16T23:31:00.000+01:00

for anyone who's interested, seven month old christmas fruitcake, stored in an airtight container for about 6 of those months, tastes pretty good after a days worth of math paper and packing.

exam week's over! and just like that, i've finished the first year of university; one third of my undergraduate course has become a memory. off to berlin tomorrow with the aim of checking out the city, soaking the world cup atmosphere and buying birkenstocks. the order of those priorities depends on who you're asking. :)

with less than a week to flying back to singapore, out of which i'll only be in london for two days, some freak streak of foresight got me to start packing my room this afternoon. and if i thought i got lucky missing the big move back home, this probably makes up for it and more. after a few hours and a few more boxes and suitcases, it doesn't actually feel like my room is getting packed... there looks to be exactly the same amount of stuff as i first started. at least i've finished packing all the winter clothes (clothes are the hardest, you have to -fold- them before putting them into boxes) and what's left looks like it'll fit into one more box (more like two, the empirical rule of packing seems to be whatever amount of space you think you'll need, you'll actually end up taking twice that). back to packing!

the sober exam mood

2006-06-14T21:48:00.000+01:00

our lecturer before the organic paper:

the students office is concerned that sitting in one position for extended periods can result in deep vein thrombosis (our paper was two hours long). so half way through the paper, we're going to ask you to stop then lead you in some stretching exercises. just kidding, you can start now.

yeah, exams here are a really really sober business.

stuck in my head

2006-06-11T18:02:00.000+01:00

a song from church this morning that's sticking in my head.

Jesus what can i give, what can i bring
to so faithful a friend, to so loving a king?
Saviour what can be said, what can be sung
as a praise for Your name, for the things You have done?
oh my words could not tell, not even in part,
of the debt of love that is owed by this thankful heart.

exam week

2006-06-11T13:47:00.000+01:00

it's 27 degrees outside and i've melted. a puddle of me will be sitting in the great hall tomorrow doing the inorganic paper.

back to blogging

2006-06-05T21:07:00.000+01:00

so, the exams are in a week, i've mugged 7 of the 9 lecture series, and i'm trying to forget that one of them (probably going to be the 9th one) ever existed. what better excuse to put off studying than blogging. in all fairness, i can think of a few - aimlessly surfing the net, watching videos you'd never otherwise watch on youtube, following the French Open on radio commentary, playing grow cube, making collages of photos you dig out of your phone...all of which i have exhausted. to save my collage from going to waste:

click on it to read the advertisement in the top left photo. noticed it on the tube some months ago; the highlighted words are underground stations (the colour just tells you which line they're on). :)

been mugging in the library the last week and a bit with yoke pean, ninghan and peixuan. while the weather outside has been turning more and more spring-like (there was one mutant week where we were half convinced that it had skipped ahead to autumn without first going through summer), the 5th floor has become a veritable greenhouse. which on one hand is good for reacclimatising to 30+ degree weather in singapore, but on the other doesn't bode well for mugging when you feel the need to nap after every meal. looking at what we ended up doing today, the heat must really be getting to us...

the hand is peixuan's as is the belt, the head is ninghan's and she loathes pink. not everyday does ninghan pose for the camera (yoke's) with a bright pink 'ribbon' in her hair.

and did i complain about the lack of daylight in winter? we must be getting at least 15 hours of daylight now with the sun properly risen by 6:30 (the earliest i've woken up in a while) and dusk only creeping in at 9:30 in the evening. don't believe me?

that's the sky at 8:30. pm. cool huh!

laundry day

2006-06-04T07:17:00.000+01:00

it's 7 am and i'm sitting here wondering what streak of masochism must have compelled me to set the alarm for 6:30 to wake up early for laundry. if it was because of the heap of clothes and what not in the laundry basket reaching alarming levels, and last night's realisation that it really shouldn't take so much stuffing and shoving to fit more clothes into the laundry basket, i'm starting to think 6:30 really wasn't worth it.

one hour till the clothes in the dryer are done, i'm crawling back into bed and setting the alarm for 8:30...

still alive

2006-06-01T21:43:00.000+01:00

at this time, in three weeks, i'm going to be back in singapore! so much for not counting down... the downside of counting down tends to involve spurts of panic every time i realise the exams are -one- day closer. and on a much much brighter side, the most amazing thing is happening - my revision is going ON schedule. never before heard of, practically unthinkable, but with less than two weeks to go, most welcomed.

so that's about it, in the exam time stasis where everything else sort of goes on hold. apart from facebook, i've also found youtube where you can watch entire seasons of shows if you search hard enough, i've buried the link for one tree hill season 2 in a document somewhere deep in the recesses of this laptop, gonna have to dig it up after the exams.

my new addiction

2006-05-16T22:38:00.000+01:00

Facebook me!

just past the half way mark in may, three and a half weeks to exams, a week left in labs and a little over a month before singapore! and time is meant to fly - more like zips, zooms, charges forward at a rate of increasing acceleration. i'm somewhat conflicted as to how quickly i want time to go by these days - can't wait to be back, can't stomach the thought of exams so soon.

so to cope with that, as with any pre-exam period, i've found a new hobby-verging-on-addiction, but thoroughly an excuse to not study - facebook! singapore unis have it too! previous exam-time hobbies include but are not restricted to watching basketball (chinese o levels in june), playing minesweeper, literati and texttwist (o levels), watching rugby (j2 block tests) and compulsive filing (a levels). ugh, back to spectra.

one week into the last term

2006-04-29T22:26:00.000+01:00

if asked what i found the most distinctive event this week - it would be the beginnings of synthesis lab and my off-orange product. synthesis lab makes the week feel almost like a working one with 9-5 days and hours sitting in the lab trying to multitask and stare the products into being. the really fun bit of synthesis lab is being able to -make- stuff, rather than just measure the properties of something someone else made, the not so fun bit is that half the time you aren't very sure what you're meant to be doing and after a while, it feels like you're stumbling along with a mixture of guesswork and luck.

next week, i get to make a bouncy rubber ball that takes the shape of the container it's put into - brings flubber to mind doesn't it.

and spring is truly, properly and most assuredly back in town, there are flowers growing everywhere. literally, on every single patch of grass you can find. the weather is warm(er), the sky is blue, the wind is refreshing as opposed to frigid, the trees are sprouting their first leaves of spring (interestingly, some trees seem to sprout flowers before the leaves, no idea how that works), the flowers are blooming and leaving my room sounds appealing once more! for a season like this, i can live with winter.

at the end of easter...

2006-04-24T20:23:00.000+01:00

so despite looming deadlines for an unfinished lab report and data analysis problem sheet and a whole new term's worth of lab waiting to unfurl, here i am. odd how it's the funniest incidents that jump starts the urge to write - today's was an article which linked to a blog that i found off bbc uk. the article's park and write by sean coughlan, about a woman who has been homeless for the last five months, living out of a car yet going to the local hospital regularly to wash and change so that the people she runs into on the streets won't think she's homeless. she has a blog, which she updates in public libraries, which gives an intriguing account and explanation of her lifestyle and how she's dealing with it.

and since i've already got some momentum going, i'll try to do a proper recount of easter. the first two weeks were in spain and italy - barcelona, madrid, toledo, segovia, venice, rome and the vatican city. then it was london for three days before heading to bath and the wiltshire area with serene - do not, under any circumstance or persuasion, drink the free glass of water they offer in the roman baths. more unsuccessful attempts to study then a weekend trip to edinburgh with xiao en on the last weekend of the easter holidays. when in scotland, try haggis - it's a blend of sheep lung, heart and guts (i'm not too sure about the guts, but there was a third component that was an innard) cooked in a sewn up sheep stomach and served with neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes). gross as that sounds, xiao en and i liked it so much we had a whole dish of it at dinner after trying a wee haggis dish at lunch.

for the still-being-uploaded photos from all that travelling, there's zoto, and for the moment (and to take up space), there's a shot of each city i visited below.

olympic village, barcelona

the crystal palace, madrid

housetops, toledo

the countryside, segovia

rialto bridge, venice

the national monument side-on, rome

in museu vaticana, vatican city

the pultney bridge and river avon, bath

castle combe, wiltshire

on top of calton hill, edinburgh

briefly back

2006-04-10T17:57:00.000+01:00

i'm back! two weeks in spain and italy were absolutely amazing! (i'm punctuated once more!) the sights, the sounds, the food, the buildings (and ruins), the people, the history, the culture, the miles of walking, the company, the photos (the many many many photos) will be unforgettable. what's really striking me now is how each city seems to have a character of its own. it's not something a sleep-fudged mind can churn into words, it's a quintissential essence you get remembering walking down different flavours of streets. photos should be coming soon, then i'm off to bath and stonehenge later this week. there's a small mountain of work that needs doing and staring at it doesn't seem to be making it go away.

guess where i am

2006-04-02T08:53:00.000+01:00

there would have been an exclamation mark after that, if not for the spanish keyboard that i´m using which seems to have punctuation everywhere else. i´m in madrid ¿that was a bracket, what i wanted to say in the brackets was to insert another exclmation mark there? at the end of one week of backpacking. it´s been amazing so far with port velle, sagrada familiar and la rambla in barcelona, loads of monuments and gardens in madrid and trips to hilly historic towns like segovia and toledo. the best part is that there´s still a week to go in italy ¿insert exclamation mark?

the 24th of march

2006-03-24T09:23:00.000Z

something i read off bbc's website...
spring has SPRUNG!
it's an 8 degree morning out there, yippeee!

happy happy randomness

2006-03-23T23:16:00.000Z

random bits of photos from my hall - some just taken out of sheer boredness and some with long overdue intentions of publishing, and bits of pieces that's happening. going counter-clockwise from the top right, cards that the class i helped out in made! it's sooooo sweet and when dilhani passed the envelope to me today after a problem class, i was turned into a lump of mush for a few minutes. if i'd knew something as simple as a card could mean so much to someone who taught me, i'd have dished a lot more of them out when i was in school.

next up, the 3 pound vase i got in the courtyard craft market in cambridge - its currently housing a wine cork and some stamps. top left - a very pixelated photo of the mess on my desk. i'd like to say that it's all been cleared up, but cannot, with a clean conscience say so, so yeah, it's probably as neat as it gets for the moment. the grey shot - the route to the kitchen. that door is probably as high as my shoulders and is normally referred to as the hatchdoor. buried under all the photos - cooked green apples and raisins! one of my attempts this week to health-ify my habits. lest you think i'm turning into a health nut, this is actually baby food that my grandma made for us when we were toddlers but i still seem to be hooked to it.

tomorrow's the last day of term, and i'm sooooo looking forward to meeting up with rubin over the weekend then carting off the spain and italy for the next two weeks. oh, and, at the risk of invoking murphy's law, the weather has taken a turn for the better - it had to be over 5 degrees this afternoon on the way back from the gym (45 minutes on the cross trainer - a built in tv works wonders).

it's not spring

2006-03-22T21:11:00.000Z

you know when i said that spring was right around the corner. i might have been exaggerating. a little. all right, a little more than a little. a lot. the temperature's fallen, the winds have picked up and i'm not entirely certain, but i think it was snowing/hailing on saturday morning. on the bright side, my trusty weather site, which i refer to when deciding how many layers to throw on, forecasts 11 degree weather in barcelona which we'll be headed to in less than a week! warm-ish weather, here i come! :)

voip stunt

2006-03-19T16:08:00.000Z

voip stunt rules - now if only it would work on my computer! i got to call audrey this afternoon before cooking lunch from jamin's room and it's been incredibly long since i -talked- to her. and xiao en and i tried to call fish as well, but silly fish wasn't picking up! :P maybe next weekend or something fish!

since this is the first time in a while talking to audrey, i couldn't not quote some of our conversation could i?

audrey: there's a bit of lag
xiao en and me: nope, we're hearing you fine this side
audrey: but i hear the echo of my voice before i hear your answer
(we had unplugged the headphones to the computer so we were listening to her through the laptop speakers)
xiao en and i look at each other a little puzzled
me: yeah, isn't that cos you finish speaking before we answer you.

a new item for kitchen must-haves (the present list has oyster sauce, maggie mee, instant soup sachets, mushrooms, chicken cubes, mixed herbs, hot chocolate and milkshake powder) is pasta bake sauce! i must have used three jars in the last week to cook baked pasta for cell on wednesday and for lunch today to make baked rice. we just have to remember to not create a netting of ham that doesn't let the sauce flow down. but otherwise, lunch today was so yummy and sooo easy to make!

it's friday again!

2006-03-17T17:43:00.000Z

honest to goodness, it's almost alarming how quickly the weeks zip past and its only on fridays when i am work-free and lazing around in my room that the passing of the week sinks in. it's the end of the second last week of term, one more week to spain and italy and after that a couple of days in bath and one in edinburgh! like kelly and i keep telling each other - can't wait for the easter holidays to come! also, it's 37-11-3-10 weeks to go before i'm singapore bound! (i normally try not to work that out so it doesn't become a countdown.)

so, to commemorate fridays, yun lei and i went shopping today on knightsbridge. and, to get into holiday spirits got sunglasses from accessorize! these are my sunglasses!
ain't they cooool! with the sliver of sunlight as an excuse to put on our sunglasses, we must have looked pretty silly walking around like we were geared up for summer when winter is only just waning.

gym induction class followed and i have to say, gym-addict that i am not, imperial's new gym is amazing. (barring the name, energia, it sounds like something a biologist named! :P) all the machines, minus the free weights, are hooked up to this system which keeps count of the distance you've run/cycled/rowed/cross-trained and kilos you've lifted and puts them into this running tally of a workout diary. and, this is the best part, most of the cardio machines have personal tv screens! with tv!! or dvds from the front desk...definitely some incentive to get to the gym.

where have i been...?

2006-03-10T17:35:00.000Z

so much has happened in the last...2 weeks that i'm not sure what's worth typing and what's going to get lost in the slew od recounting that's coming up. first there was cambridge, which was undescribable fun. like xiao en said so well, it's been too long since we've had a whole day of dedicated silliness and fun, going trigger happy and shopping. bits of the trip that must be highlighted - EAT. the deli with soup so good, goose and i tracked it down with our noses,

the crafts market in the courtyard of the church opposite john's where i got a cool vase for 3 quid and goose and i got earrings, john's which is soooooo beautiful,

monsters round the world,

gardie (short for gardenia's) which even after the hype has very nice donna kebab, dinner we cooked - sweet and sour pork and cod baked with an improvised recipe - we chefs, we good chefs-, a what was it...6? course dessert that the five of us very nearly managed to finish and definitely not least, goose, agnes, xiao en and charlene - thanks for the great trip!

the next weekend it was off to orpington with the cu committee, no photos from this time around, but some very applicable teaching from the book of jonah (which the speaker very accurately described as needing rescue from sunday school- seriously, before this, my general impression of jonah didn't go very far beyong getting consumed by a big fish), very encouraging and refreshing fellowship with other cus from around london and loads of momentum to get me going.

interlude of a week of labs. speaking of interludes, just before orpington there was romeo and juliet in the royal opera house. even if you hate the opera and have no idea what ballet is about, the interior of the royal opera house is reason enough to watch a performance there. the ballet was long (3 whole acts! with no one speaking!) but spectacular, the costumes especially and i particularly like the choreography for juliet's pieces with erm, the guy she didn't want to marry (starts with b...).

then there's today which has been an amazing day, i'm not sure if trying to describe it would do it justice. first there was the fiasco with the insurance company and how they were going to void my claim because i hadn't paid the february installment which i couldn't do a thing about cos it had a direct debit thingamajig. so calling the insurance company, with fingers and toes crossed, half formed arguments about the technicalities of it, hope that they wouldn't void my claim like their letter was threatening to and prayers that they be understanding, it was incredible when right after giving them my reference number, they told me that the replacement phone had been dispatched. how amazing is that.

coming back from high street and booking my air ticket home - for the curious, i ought to be back on the 22nd of june - i popped by the hall office hoping that the phone might have been delivered to find that the packages my dad seamailed from chinese new year had arrived. now i have to confess that i hadn't been too enthusiastic about the packages cos he'd told me he sent chicken cubes. only thing he forgot to mention was -2 boxes of pineapple tarts-. thanks papa!! :) to finish off this concerted post, more photos and a couple of verses that have gotten me thinking.

but whatever was to my profit, i now consider loss for the sake of Christ. what is more, i consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing goodness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake i have lost all things. i consider them rubbish that i may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

- philippians 3:7-9

arghhhhhuuuuughhhh

2006-02-20T17:47:00.000Z

this lab week no look good. investigating peroxide iodide reaction kinetics is possibly the most disgusting experiment there is - the remaining possibility is the one kelly and yun lei are doing this week, which doesn't sound too great either: quations, what on earth are quations?

horror began with the 4 titrations it took just to determine the concentration of the peroxide solution and continued when a solution which took over an hour to cool started turning yellow when it was meant to turn blue. argh...... looking on the bright side of things, we decided to junk the 0 degrees run and managed to finish two decent runs at 20 degrees. also, drumroll please, the sun was still up when we left the lab at 5 o'clock! no matter how cranky the weather, i'm quite quite sure that spring has to be round the corner. one problem we've run into is that all the failed runs might mean not having enough peroxide solution (i'm not sure if there's anyone still following at this point) and making a new batch might just mean having to go through another four rounds of titration which at this moment sounds awful.

forgetting about lab for now, i'm sure there must be a wizarding family living just down the road from me, and here's my proof:

house number 132 and a half, what'd i tell ya...

all creatures of our God and King

2006-02-19T18:30:00.000Z

a new hymn (there must be some juxtapositioning in that that i'm missing in my present sleepy state) that we sung in church today.

all creatures of our God and King
lift up your voice and with us sing,
alleluia! alleluia!
thou burning sun with golden beam,
thou silver moon with softer gleam!

O praise Him! O praise Him!
alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!

thou rushing wind that art so strong,
ye clouds that sail in heaven along!
O priase Him! alleluia!
thou rising moon, in praise rejoice,
ye lights of evening, find a voice!

O praise Him! O praise Him!
alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!

thou flowing water pure and clear,
make music for thy Lord to hear!
O praise Him! alleluia!
thou fire so masterful and bright,
that givest man both warmth and light!

O praise Him! O praise Him!
alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!

and all ye man of tender heart,
forgiving others, take your part!
O praise Him! alleluia!
ye who long pain and sorrow bear,
priase God and on Him cast your care!

O praise Him! O praise Him!
alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!

let all things their Creator bless,
and worship Him in humbleness!
O priase Him! alleluia!
praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
and praise the Spirit, three in one!

O praise Him! O praise Him!
alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!

just like you sing it

2006-02-14T18:03:00.000Z

all right, so i'm breaking a freshly made resolution to not blog in the middle of the week cos my posts turn out on such a random note. but i figured, two minutes after figuring my resolution, that what's a blog meant for if not incoherent rambling? so here i am, with my lab book in front of me, waiting for inspiration to begin a lab report, blogging.

hwa chong nite was a whole lot of fun - trust me, there are few things which provide as much pure and simple fun as belching out the chorus of chinese songs and bouncing to the steps of mass dances that you never quite learnt.

and this week's been so great, that losing my phone hardly seems like anything at this point (apart from the very irritating few hours spent trying to sort things out with police reports, line barring and insurance companies). found out that crossword puzzle we were hell-bent on solving last week actually won a usb thumbdrive, and picking that up yesterday made my entire day. picked up woman in white tickets today (i'm beginning to see what's in it for retail therapy, owning new stuff has this way of painting on veneers of momentary happiness) for next week's show. finished math lab early and walked home to find a ridiculously pleasant day - blue skies, bearable cold, and no squint-causing wind - which was ample excuse to put my lab report on hold and make a photo-taking walk.

so despite the lack of a phone or a completed lab report, i am verging on euphoria. there are rumours of ice cream after dinner, which if true, will just perfect my already very nice day. :) can't quite express how thankful i am for such impeccable timing and amazing coordination of very random things which did wonders for what would have turned out to be a rather miserable week. oh! and go see photos - they're on zoto!

the weekend at last!

2006-02-11T12:06:00.000Z

i've survived 12 hours of lab this week! that aside it was a reeeeally good week choked full of good news both from home and here for which i shall always be thankful for. and, wei and i - after realising that we haven't had a proper chat in eeeeeeons - finally got round to having a full length video conversation. my landmarks for the week. :)

since this is already spiralling into a very disorganised post - here's more randomness:

just got back from our weekly grocery trip to sainsbury and guess what we found! 6 jam tarts for 19 pence! i kid you not; that has to be even cheaper than what you can find in singapore. organic chemistry tutorial in the background, elp!

also, go check out the trailer for happy feet - it's on the apple trailers webiste. a movie all about funky penguins - if you thought the penguins in madagascar were cool, these are hilarious! singing, stomping, tap-dancing penguins coming to screens in november 2006.

birmingham land of chocolate

2006-02-05T16:42:00.000Z

i never, ever, ever thought i'd say this, but there was a point yesterday - a small, infinitesimal moment - where i couldn't bring myself to have anymore chocolate. not one more mouthful, not even when i was surrounded by a shopful of every flavoured chocolate or with bars of free samples in my bag. that's what cadbury world can do to you.

that aside, it was really quite a different experience. granted that the tour is catered for kids a third my age, but there's something about chocolate that has to appeal to every age group, even a cocoa-bean populated world and a very random 'happiness' letter punching game. after that, there was birmingham's city centre where we tried to find a shop selling balti, a dish birmingham is reputed for. after hunting down -3- shops, all of which were closed till dinner time, we settled for kebabs. donner kebab (i think it's some way of doing lamb), yumm!

chocolate galore! shelves and shelves of it...

vintage chocolate packaging, i was -this- close to getting one packet

somewhere near bullring, birmingham's shopping complex
i think the last shopping mall i saw was in singapore

somedays

2006-02-02T15:32:00.000Z

somedays, you wake up and the minute you get out of bed you feel like you've lost something, or that something's not right. that something tends to be my room keys and somedays happened to be today. so after turning everything on my desk over (in an absolute figurative sense), checking under my bed, in my wardrobe, in my laundry basket, between the bed sheets, in my shoes and the top of the cabinet, the elusive set of keys were found in my pencil box (??! - don't ask me why, couldn't have been thinking very clearly when i packed up after writing a little more of my lab report last night).

mission season week 4, love actually, if God is love, why doesn't everyone go to heaven? how does one put that into a neat package which both grounds itself in reasonability and doesn't discount the miracle that God's love for us is; how does one tread the fine line between a light, unthreatening delivery of that topic and still retain the absolute implications that this uncompromising truth brings.

someone asked, after the talk, that if it didn't all seem a little unfair - that God should create man and give him a free choice, but punish him when he picks the wrong choice. the answer was something that i've never thought of. somewhere in the Bible, we're told that God had planned to have Jesus die on the cross to atone for our sins, way before creation - that is to say, He knew before He even started creating the world that we would rebel, that we would reject the gift of life with Him that He offers and that we needed someone to redeem us. if it were anyone else, knowing that your own creation would reject you and rebel against you, why bother to create it in the first place, and why bother coming up with such a painful way of redeeming them. so yes, it was extremely unfair, it was extremely one-sided, but it was unfair to God, not us, that He still chose to create our universe, our world, us, knowing as He did what would happen. but He still did, it's really stunning.

kinda givesa whole new dimension of understanding to how unexpected and all-encompassing God's love for us is. ties in to cell last night too, that God is love, God is the definition of love and it's only in seeking Him in reading the bible and in prayer that we'll have a greater understanding and appreciation (appreciation is probably the greatest understatement you could make) of His love for us, and how we can show love.

xin nian kuai le!

2006-01-29T23:21:00.000Z

so, what's chinese new year like in london? very very different. we have steamboat, we have mahjong (well, kind of, 5 games, if that counts), we have lots of company, we have the chinese new year greetings (xin nian kuai le! i can even remember how to write that!), we even have ba kuah (thanks papa!), pineapple tarts and love letters, we even have the leftovers from steamboat the next day.

so, what's so different? family. i love the independence, i can accept the new found responsibility that comes with it (except, perhaps, changing my sheets. i truly dislike changing the bedsheets), but the lack of family is something i'll never get used to and chinese new year is -the- time of the year that my family's absence is most felt. (actually, christmas is --the-- time of the year with family for me, but papa and wei were here with me so it doesn't actually count towards the discussion.)

so, am i homesick? yes and no. yes, i miss my family terribly. i miss the hilarious moments we have at huge gatherings, i miss the cuddly cousins, i miss the not-so-cuddly cousins that i can bum around with, i miss the amazing food that's bound to be part of any family gathering, i miss seeing everyone and catching up on how every little branch of the family has been, i miss seeing the new additions to the family in the past year, i miss rummy kub, i miss the quiet moments where we're just sitting there, i miss steamboat socks, i plain miss my family. but no, i'm not homesick. i've missed em for so long (and i dunno if this is good or bad) that i miss em, but it's not something that stops me in my tracks and gets me down.

so, there, i've had my rant. :) hats off if you're still reading here, because i doubt i'd have survived this long if i were not the one writing it. on a less ranty strand, steamboat last night was terrific, it superceded any expectation i might have had of open-rice-cooker-steamboats. the soup was yummy and i've got a slightly scalded tongue to prove it. :) chicken rice today for lunch (xiao en's right, who else but very deprived overseas students eat chicken rice on chinese new year?), tung yuans for desert and steamboat leftovers for dinner.

randomly: some photos/pictures that are making me happy at the moment:

video conferencing with my grandma and littlest cousin
in hong kong

animal tales - a new stamp release from royal mail

for the little things...

2006-01-23T17:32:00.000Z

it's the little things that restore my day after a mildly horrific 3 hour session in the lab. the smell of freshly baked chocolate cake sitting on my roommate's table and the offer of a piece when it's cooled down. an email from my grandma telling me about the usual pineapple tart baking sessions leading up to chinese new year. stories about my littlest cousin in hong kong. seeing the (still in-the-middle-of-being-replied) letters from goose and my cousin sitting on my desk.

6 more hours of lab to go this week, 2 more electrolytic circuits to run and one more lab report to write.

for the little things, i am eternally grateful.

random rambles

2006-01-19T00:02:00.000Z

i don't think i've taken the space to ramble over how amazing it has been helping out at sacred hearts. of course there are days when i am mentally bracing myself for the chaos of the classroom. yes, there are days when i sit in math lectures in the morning wondering why i ever committed myself to a weekly program after a rare (ok, all right, not so rare. soon to be rare, with labs kicking in next week) short day of school. but there are brief moments; snippets of time in the classroom, the fleeting glimpse of understanding dawning that makes every other moment of it worthwhile.

algebra was on the lesson plan today and like any other first-timep-algebra-class, we had a whale of a time trying to convince the girls that you can write an expression ("no equals signs, those are for equations") using symbols in lieu of numbers you don't need to know. it was really amazing though to be there as they suddenly get the concept. tons of stuff that you can't record, like the elation when one of the girls who normally struggles with math manages to finish the exercise, the excitement when another one gets excited when she gets the hang of figuring out how to simplify x + x + x - x - x . and there are bits of the school that remind me so much of mg too - the classroom atmosphere, the teachers, the ethos.

and, i now own half a jar of pineapple tarts and a bag of crispy coated seaweed. many many thanks to qing zhao. also got a chance to catch fractions of a debate in the house of commons (something about a proposal allowing them to ammend a proposal for some vehicle for a clause pertaining to equal rights for transexuals) and in the house of lords (something about the monetary cost benefit analysis of implementing ID cards).

i neeeeeeed a material for the presentation on friday. blah. not quite done.

to touristy trips

2006-01-17T23:46:00.000Z

i love it when family and friends visit - it gives me a terrific excuse to both be touristy and drag people off to my favourite spots in london. plans to visit the queen's rooms in buckingham palace today were tweeked and after snapping away at buckingham palace gate, we ended up walking from picadilly circus all the way to knightsbridge and later on to my hall. yes, picadilly circus to my hall, with detours to harrods on knightsbridge, imperial, the royal albert concert hall and south kensington station all along the way. if only i could convince myself that one healthy day like this can make up for all of christmas' indulgence... :)

and some photos to show also from our touristy exploits:

at the queen's memorial outside buckingham palace (above) and the architecture of prince consort road in the silhouette of sunset (below).

how deep the Father's love for us

2006-01-12T21:20:00.000Z

behold that man upon the cross
my sin upon his shoulders
ashamed, i hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers
it was my sin that held Him there
until it was accomplished
His dying breath has bought me life
i know that it is finished

i will not boast in anything
no gifts, no power, no wisdom
but i will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection
why should i gain from His reward
i do not know the answer
but this i know with all my heart
his wounds have paid my ransom

a song that i haven't sung in eons that was played during hub this evening. a timely reminder of the vastness of God's amazing grace poured out for each of us and a chiding for the times i have been too timid or skeptical to stand up for Him. the first lines in the second verse are amazing, as though a rejoinder to show the contrast to the shame of the lines preceding it.

i will not boast in anything; no gifts, no power, no wisdom; but i will boast in Jesus Christ; His death and resurrection.

one of my most favourite songs ever

2006-01-07T15:34:00.000Z

hurray!! i've finally found the mp3 of this song! thanks a zillion bean! not only does it have the most beautiful lyrics, i seem to remember it very keenly from my childhood.

be Thou my vision o Lord of my heart
not be all else to me save that thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
waking or sleeping Thy presence my light

be Thou my wisdom and Thou my true word
i ever with Thee and Thou with me lord
Thou my great father and i Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and i with Thee one

riches i heed not nor man's empty praise
Thou my inheritance now and always
Thou and Thou only first in my heart
high king of heaven my treasure Thou art

be Thou my vision o Lord of my heart
not be all else to me save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
waking or sleeping Thy presence my light

high King of heaven my victory won
may i reach heaven's joys bright heaven sun
heart of my own heart whatever befall
still be my vision o ruler of all

mugging week

2006-01-05T23:24:00.000Z

three days left. just over two thirds done. movie trivia is starting to become a fascinating subject.

mugging has this ability to make the most mundane of things interesting - i feel compelled to pack my desk or rearrange my shelf at least once a day. on the one day that i did start packing my desk, i found a name card for a photographer i met in camden market a few weeks ago. check it out Tina Maas Photography. her polaroids are really cool, although i'm not sure if it's a developing technique or a digital effect.

Tina Maas Photography
then there was this afternoon where i was rocking at my desk reading quantum mechanics notes (really, physics trying to pass off as chemistry if you ask me), waiting for distraction to come along when i saw a terrific view out of my window.

now, you might be thinking, all right, she's really bored. too many days couped up at home studying ain't good for you, cabin sickness. but that's cos the photo doesn't do the scene too much justice. it was on a backdrop of overcast skies that an improbable angle of sunlight lit the autumn trees to glow against. and while i was at it, there was the silhouette opportunity i couldn't pass up

and for the record, grilled chicken is now on the menu. :) a slosh of soya sauce and a dash of oil (sesame of vegetable cooking oil) as marinade and a bunch of flattened chicken thighs, half an hour in the grill or oven and voila, edible grilled chicken! would have experimented with table top essence today when the bowl of marinade got spilled onto the table top, but great plans were thwarted in by peixuan and daryl in the interest of hygeine.

bah. the end of another distraction. back to quantum mechanics.

crowded isolation

2006-01-02T23:43:00.000Z

today went by without me seeing another soul, not one (unless you count the girl i shocked while going to the laundry room to pick up laundry. and i didn't so much see her as hear her in all fairness). and something about that feels distinctly wrong.

sure, there's msn and skype and telephones - i messaged, video conferenced and chatted - but the uneasiness comes from not having -seen- anyone today. sometimes, i suspect the reason why meeting up with a bunch of friends over meals of drinks remains so appealing even today is less for the yakking convenience and more for the shared company you get to enjoy. and by company, i mean presence. with that, there's definitely a case to be made for how too sophisticated a telecommunications system can isolate individuals even as it shrinks the world.

on a much less introspective note, I'VE FINISHED MUGGING PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY. yes, it took me half a week, but hey i'm done!! been an almost painful half-week trying to tunnel into a mugging momentum; countless snacks, websites, text twist and literati games not withstanding, i think i've found the shreds of it that remain after a whole year off proper studying.

organic and inorganic chemistry, here i (finally) come! :)

once again this new year

2006-01-01T17:09:00.000Z

and once again i look upon the cross where You died
i'm humbled by Your beauty and i'm broken inside
once again i thank You
once again i pour out my life

a christmas departure, boxing day sales and white post-boxing day

2005-12-27T17:21:00.000Z

poof! and thus comes to an end what was an inexplicably memorable week of christmas holidays with my family over. thanks for the quiet but absolutely terrific christmas this year - my best present was you all coming over! :)

we had a white post-post-christmas or post-boxing day - nothing like blizzards of snow, but a good half hour of very decent snowfall that left the ground white smudged for at least 15 minutes! there was a second round of snow that i was caught in on my walk back from high street (with my spoils of boxing day sales shopping!) and i must say that watching snow falling from my room was much more fun than walking through a light shower. still, the falling snow is such a pretty sight! way more than enough to make up for the slush that comes afterwards.

the spoils of two days of shopping:

my new cushions, milkshake powder and a mug i really like (which my dad thinks is perfectly boring) from whittards and more socks from h&m
off to hit the books (ok, maybe with just one more venture to king's road to check out the shopping scene).

half a week in london...

2005-12-20T23:27:00.000Z

a quick snapshot of our last half week in london (because my brother wants to dota from my laptop):

the alcoholics

this is what alcohol does to you

on albert bridge at sunset

the unthinkable has happened!!

the london eye

yes, i had to include the bald trees

yippeee!

2005-12-17T23:35:00.000Z

they're here! and my brother is virulently hating the cold. if i could, i would post hilarious pictures of him dressed up for the cold - imagine a wooly scarf wrapped round your head so that the only opening is a slit for your eyes, with the hood of the hoodie pulled over it. it would look so menacing and suspicious if not for the fact that the two ends of the scarf stick out of the hood somewhere you would imagine his cheeks to be, perfectly parallel to the floor. i would, but unfortunately i can't as i suspect he wouldn't talk to me for a while if i did.

some things in london are meant to be experienced as a family i think. and one of those things is kensington gardens - my brother in winter garb no withstanding, i think there must be some genetic factor to fascination-bordering-on-obsession with bald trees. oh, and my dad noticed this hilarious sign posted on the physics/math/computing building this morning that reads 'no smoking bicycles' which i must have walked past dozens of times without reading:

a very productive day at camden town - my brother got loads of printed tshirts in camden market, my dad finally got to relive traditional fish and chips (in a warm setting which made my brother even happier) and i've found christmas presents for fish and audrey! the arts and crafts market in camden is possibly one of the coolest markets i've seen - it really has -everything-, especially very nice prints.

dad also pointed out the locks on the river, which is what allows water in a continuous body to exist at two different levels -and- allow ships to pass through that body of water. nifty huh.

off to hibernate in preparation for the forecasted sub zero temperatures tomorrow - sundays are always the coldest day of the week. brrrr....

do you know what day tomorrow is!

2005-12-13T18:19:00.000Z

it's the day my dad and brother come to london! i'm positively bursting with excitement and brimming over with happiness. can't wait to see them after sooo long and my only worry is that i just might get lost trying to find the presently-unconnected-terminal-4 when i go pick them up!

yun lei and i, good, diligent students of chemistry that we are, or as klement would say estudiantes de la química, attended the christmas lecture titled 'chemistry of love'. which you must admit would sound interesting to the average reasonable person, not just oddities who voluntarily hole themselves up in labs for extended periods of time. unfortunately, the lecture turned out to be something way beyond our powers of comprehension and delved into proposals involving wave functions (and that much feared symbol psi - pronounced as sigh), external factors, unnameable constants and dynamic selforganised systems (you know, the likes of snowflakes. thus ends my understanding of it).

on the bright side, we got to check out the staff half of the common room and guzzle down apple juice, minced pies and cups of chips (all right, all right, most of the guzzling was done by me). one day more, one day more, i can't wait at all!

one day more

2005-12-11T23:52:00.000Z

the song i've been humming for the last few days (and occasionally singing when it gets to a stretch where i can make up the words - generally they revolve around permutations of one, day and more). must be a sublime combination of having watched les miserables last week and the anticipation of my dad and brother coming up! :)

4 more days!

2005-12-10T22:58:00.000Z

...to my dad and brother's arrival! nothing beats family that you haven't seen in months coming to visit you in the place that you're studying! can't wait!!

diane [in Christ alone I place my trust] says:
hihi, how's tigger doing?
(tigger is my recently named orange and black striped squash racquet)
diane [in Christ alone I place my trust] says:
is he still in one piece?
/yun// says:
haha, yes, don't worry
/yun// says:
i love tigger to bits too
/yun// says:
not a good expression
diane [in Christ alone I place my trust] says:
bits?? bits??!

my little bit of hilarity for today. today was exploring day! the original itinerary was to take the underground to leicester square, get onto long acre (a road) and find stanfords - the coolest map shop imaginable with loads of very nice reproductions of antique maps (at 10 quid per print, i was -that- close to getting one before i realised that i could do absolutely nothing with it. you might realise i'm always -that- close to getting many things, shopping monster that i've become :P) then wonder off along charing cross road (the street with lots of second hand, antique and specialist bookstores) and pick up some cheap and light holiday reading then saunter down oxford street to meet up with yun lei for squash.

my first waylay occured soon after stepping out of stanfords when i spotted a high bell-tower at the end of the road. and since it was a clear, sunny saturday morning on a not-so-crowded street of people, i headed in that direction to find...

...freemason hall london! apparently its where the freemasons assemble and other events take place, but it was closed by the time i got there, so there was only the chance to look around its exterior. (that photo is kopped off a website cos i wasn't carrying my camera with me.) this is exactly what i mean though, about historical buildings being so completely integrated into the thralls of new buildings in london (new also being a very subjective term, but much newer at the very least) - it never fails to leave me awestruck.

the second waylay occured halfway up charing cross road when i decided to pop into sains to grab some lunch on the go. instead, i found pringles on discount! two tubes of sour cream and onion for 1.60, my favourite flavour too!

and so it turns out, that the spoils of an afternoon in town are 2 tubes of pringles, 60 slow release vitamin c tablets (from superdrugs; contrary to its name, it is a very reliable pharmacist like boots), a tube of colgate (running low on the toothpaste supply), a free tote bag from evans (purple and white, i can live with some purple), a pair of slightly sore legs, a well worked out left arm (squash today was terrrrrrific! possibly the first time i've broken sweat here!) and a sense of satisfaction in having navigated from long acre to sussx gardens without getting hopelessly lost. one more week of school, four more days to family! :)

something at 8:20 in the morning...

2005-12-07T08:20:00.000Z

to make up for the recent lack of proper photos from london and since it's too early to post anything intelligible.

my desk lamp all decked out and ready for christmas

a reeeeeally cute photoholder from the open market in cambridge seen when i was there about a month ago.
and finally, a new wallpaper and proof of it too, for everyone who's been nagging me to make my laptop more interesting...

something i forgot to mention...

2005-12-06T17:36:00.000Z

...stanley gibbons on 399 strand! possibly the absolute coolest place in london for a stamp collector (i was thinking of in the world but remembered the stamp exhibition yvonne and i visited earlier this year and that was seriously the coolest stamp place to be). serene and i chanced upon it somewhere on our wander from covent gardens to trafalgar square, following the sight of nelson's column from afar. instructions on getting back: take the underground to covent gardens, find ben's cookies in the covered market, buy a cookie and start walking and somehow end up on strand outside stanley gibbons'.

the shop is nothing like the post offices in singapore or the occasional tiny stamp collector's shop tucked away in a slightly shady building. it occupies a proper, significant, street facing space on a easy to find road in the kind-of-heart-of-theatreland. and it has -everything-. from tweezers, to empty fillers, to first day covers, to stamp glue, to loose stamps, to stamp magazines to stamp publications, to starter packets to magnifying glasses to really old stamps which cost all the money in my bank account at the moment to back dated stamp monthlies which cost 75p! (which i was very tempted to buy till common sense took over)

what i was actually considering though was the miniature sheet or presentation pack for trafalgar 2005 commemorating the 200th anniversary of nelson's (?) victory in the battle of trafalgar. have this thing about old wooden ships (complete with masts) and maps and pencil drawings and blueprint diagrams. anyway, here's a photo of the stamps in contemplation:

today's discovery: tuesday is actually a really good day for laundry. empty washing machines and dryers galore!

week 9 of school

2005-12-06T00:11:00.000Z

week -9-. i've been here for -9- whole weeks. it's ridiculously hard to believe, even for me, or perhaps especially for me. (i was planning on writing something about how much i've learnt out of school here, but most of it is so fundamental that it's hard to put into words - the easiest one might be: grilling plates = bad idea; aluminium foil in grill = good)

been one of those busy weekends where you feel like you've been everywhere, haven't done a single quantifiable thing (except diagnose that my milk had seriously gone bad and threw it out of the fridge), and not done enough nice unquantifiable things like spending time with friends whom you only get to meet once every 3 months (although there are some memories that i'll probably never forget - like playing a thinking game of taiti with serene and lixin).

serene's in london till tuesday evening so we explored and had a touristy afternoon (there's part of me that still can't believe i'm meeting up with friends -in london-. how cool can it get?) visited covent gardens (where i got a santa hat which come what may i am going to wear to school next week (the last week of term) to get myself into the christmas mood) and the national gallery this afternoon (without getting lost!). the national gallery is situated at trafalgar square (behind nelson's column - thanks to tong kai, i now know who nelson was) and is absoutely amazingly terrific.

there was this painting (by an artist whose name i can't quite recall, considering how horrific i am with friends' names, let alone a european artist) of winter in paris with a white washed snow covered background against a foreground of pedestrians dressed in stark black and dark colours. it was as though the painting drew you in somehow, as though you were one of the people in the painting walking on snow covered streets.

there was also work by more famous artists like rubens (truth be told, i've never heard of him till today, but going by the number of paintings he had up, he qualifies as famous), monet, rembrandt, da vinci and munch (munch! heeheeehee). for the lack of photographs (i blame the yucky sky that's so unconducive for photo taking though a larger part of it stems from my general laziness), here's some images i kopped (code switching) off the net.

the water-lily pond by monet
impressionistic style, pretty!

the miraculous draught of fishes by rubens
based on the gospels of jesus' miracle

the adoration of the kings by gossaert
also based on jesus' birth in the gospels, so amazing isn't it, how the bible has inspired such amazing pieces of art
dinner at leiceser square followed by les miserables at queens! ah! i love musicals, absolutely love em. looking forward to getting the entire soundtrack of the musical, and it had such a nice story too! morning lectures tomorrow (as is the case on any weekday) so i'm off to bed in the hope of waking up more than 30 minutes before the lecture.

the song in my head

2005-11-27T21:49:00.000Z

there must be more than this
o breath of God come breathe within
there must be more than this
spirit of God we wait for You

fill us anew we pray
fill us anew we pray

consuming fire fan into flame
a passion for Your name
spirit of God fall in this place
Lord have Your way
Lord have Your way with us

more cooking exploits

2005-11-25T22:02:00.000Z

and after a brilliant dish the last time cooking, we decided to get adventurous and try out -grilling-. yup, you read right, no more conventional pan stir fying or boiling or steaming, -grilling-. so to hedge our bets, we decided to grill half the chicken and stir fry the other half (that way we'd at least have something to eat if the grilling went wrong).

so we marinated the chicken with out-of-a-jar bbq sauce, no sweat, even peeled back the skin to rub the sauce into the meat as it's meant to make the flavour go deeper. then we opened the grill that we were preheating to find a disgusting grilling tray. like oil and grease caked, sooty (there's good reason for this in just a moment) and handleless.

make-shift, spur-of-the-moment chefs that we are, we didn't have any heay duty deruster, degreaser or dishwashing liquid, nor were we going to try to scrub that monstrosity. aluminium foil was also unavailable. so we made a split second decision - to grill the chicken on a plate. which might not seem such a brilliant idea to most, but we reasoned that if you can microwave a plate and microwaves superheat water mind you, grilling should be nothing to a plate. hey, a plate was made in a furnace wasn't it? what's a few hundred degrees celcius?

so we put the plate in the grill and checked on it after 10 minutes and this is what it looked like:

the black pan is part of the yucky grilling tray and the equally black arc is part of what used to be a very nice plate. the three bits in the foreground (also black) is grilled chicken (which all in all tasted quite good after you peeled off the incinerated skin).

after we opened the grill door (another challenge in itself as the door is in a few more parts than it is meant to be), smoke engulfed the kitchen and for a few moments there we thought we were going to be the culprits who set off the 5th fire alarm this week (we had 3 on sunday night, in between 2 and 4 am and another on monday noon) but thanks to some quick thinking started fanning at the smoke detector with a cereal box (used to store our cutlery) and part of the toaster oven (things come in parts rather than wholes, you start getting used to that in the hall).

all in all, a pretty good dinner of seaweed-tasting-overcooked-spinach (it got forgotten in the chaos of the incinerated chicken and imminent fire alarm) and grilled/stir fried chicken.

the perfect one dish meal

2005-11-22T20:13:00.000Z

one sachet of bakuteh flavouring (packet sawed open with a serrated knife)
half a large garlic (peeled all over the kitchen counter top)
two chicken drumsticks and thighs (separated and attempts made to debone)
a lot of pey chai (individual stalks separated but not broken)
a handful of expired mushrooms (sliced with a very blunt knife)

heat 1 litre of tap water to boiling in a large flask
pour boiling water into large saucepan and place bakuteh sachet in boiling water
add in pieces of the large half garlic, turn on stove and allow water to reboil
when boiling, add chicken pieces in - meat/bones/red things that look dubiously like veins
leave on stove for approximately 20 minutes (depending on how often you insist on lifting the lid to taste the soup and stab the chicken)
add washed pey chai and use wooden ladle (or cold numbed fingers) to squeeze into saucepan then recover and leave on stove for a further 10 minutes
add mushrooms (conveniently forgotten to this point) on top of pey chai, above water (if anyone asks why, say you are 'steaming' them) and leave on stove for a further 5 minutes
remove from stove, allow to cool, then serve

cambridge, oxford and a lab report

2005-11-15T22:22:00.000Z

cambridge and oxford in a whirlwind of a weekend, 10 hrs of coach rides, herds of sheep, bunches of cows, miles of country side, towers of colleges, expanses of courtyards, hours of shopping, dishes of delumptuous asian food, and most of all loads of friends that i haven't seen since singapore, man, i miss everyone so much. i think i had a mini bout of homesickness when i got back to london and the reality of my room, lab reports and school the next day.

and on that topic, i'm glad to report that the lab report is finished, voila, done, gone. i'm so happy and so sleep deprived. some of the signs that you're very sleep deprived - when you start trying to comb your hair with a spoon, take dried laundry out of the dryer and start folding a few shirts and matching a few socks before realising that you opened the wrong dryer, fold your laundry and walk out of the laundry room before realising you left your entire load of laundry on the chair...

i'm reeeeally looking forward to the next time i see everyone, people in uk and people in singapore. everyone. one month to my dad and brother coming over to london, i'm looking forward to that too! my dad just showed me the box of fruit cake my grandma made for me! ah, makes me so happy just to know that i have fruitcake this year. wednesday, here i come!

i love technology

2005-11-10T22:47:00.000Z

oh the joys of modern technology. who needs supercomputers, interactive whiteboards (though they are still very very cool), spectras, spectroscopy, picosecond timers or finely caliberated mechanical balances (finely caliberated my foot, the scale doesn't stop fluctuating across a range of 0.2 gm!) when you have magnetic stirring boards!

"stir the resultant suspension for 35 minutes and then treat it with..."

sentences in lab briefs that can dampen even the warmest, happiest of days. since i drew the figurative short straw, i ended up doing this half of the experiment (more accurately, it's because i don't like setting up sprawling apparatus for steam distillation and my lab partner detests using the weighing balance and measuring cylinder excessively for reaction synthesis).

so there i was, having measured/weighed every chemical and dumped them into the cauldron of my round bottomed flask, sitting miserably at the bench attacking the solution with a glass stirring rod, a measly 10 minutes into the stipulated 35, when my partner (who is nearly as bored watching the contents of his round bottomed flask distil) points to a white platform with a pill shaped piece on it and wonders in the interest of light conversation what that is for.

and it turns out, that it's one of the most wonderful inventions in chemistry. a magntic stirrer. all you do is drop the pill like thing (which is the magnetic stirrer) into the flask, rest the round bottomed flask on the platform (preferably with the aid of a retort stand), turn up the stirring speed (it makes really cool whirring noises at speed 10) and watch it! absolutely, fantabulously, flawlessly wonderful. and to think that i was planning on mushing at the bottom of a round bottomed flask with a glass stirrer for 35 minutes.

a nearly perfect chemistry lab today. my partner's half of the experiment produced amazing crystals (mine are slightly wet, but so were our neighbours'), a theoretically correct TLC plate (only after doctoring; we're redoing it tomorrow) and a really nifty IR spectrum. whoopee, an hour or two of lab tomorrow then i'm off to cambridge for the weekend. and asian food festival at oxford on saturday night! yummmmmmy

stargazing

2005-11-06T22:37:00.000Z

gah!! guess what i did today! i went down to leicester square to watch the world premiere of harry potter and the goblet of fire. it was so cool! there was a mechanical fire snorting dragon (which they used as some sort of space filler on the big screen whenever there wasn't anyone to interview), a humongous recreation of the triwizard cup, loads of harry potter fans, and nearly all the actors from the movie!

there were the weasley twins, rupert grint (ron weasley), cho chang, cedric diggory, draco malfoy (who really looks much better without long blonde hair gelled backwards), hagrid, arthur weasley, seamus, mike newell (the director), emma watson (who the guys were swooning over, it was hilarious, truly) and daniel radcliffe! of course, this being a global premiere and us arriving 5 minutes before the celebrities, we only managed to catch real live glimpses of them when they crossed this platform to enter the cinema, but i managed to catch a glimpse of emma watson, daniel radcliffe and ginny weasley! ha!

all in all, i must say that this star-chasing/gazing thing is quite overrated, but for harry potter, i could make some exception - especially since this is the one time the global premiere has shifted to london from new york.

many apologies for the lousy photo - i took about 20 shots to get one clear one before giving up, tucking my camera away and just enjoying stargazing. (there's something very wrong grammatically with that sentence, but i need to beautify a math lab report so off i go.)

a speedy update

2005-11-04T17:50:00.000Z

to see the world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.

-william blake

my first november post! i've officially been here for more than a month. many many apologies for the somewhat sporadic and dependably irregular posts - sometimes i sit down in front of my laptop with so many things that i want to write and not enough time or energy or stamina (my fingers still aren't quite acclimatised to the cold) that i don't want to have to write some stuff and leave out others and i end up not writing anything even though i'm brimming over with stuff i want to say. this has resulted in a metaphorically constipated feeling over the last week, so here i am trying to spew everything i want to write.

first up, some obligatory mention of the weather. it's been -cold-. 8 degrees this morning. brrrr. it's on days like these that i'm reminded that winter is just round the corner and closing in still, resulting in productive winter clothing shopping trips along high street. today's happy purchase was a black knee length wool mix coat. for fifty pounds from h&m! feeling rather contented with my buy. oh, and not to mention five pairs of colourful socks to wear with boots for 4.99 - don't tell my grandma, i think the ban she imposed on buying more socks might have extended beyond ankle socks to high socks too.

lixin and tong kai came down from oxford last saturday and their tour of london extended to st paul's cathedral. which deserves an entire tome of proper description to do it proper justice, but to spare everyone and sum it up, it was absolutely, marvellously, fantastically awe-inspiring. high ceilings, finely painted domes, frescoes, the light of the world painting, chiselled monuments of characters from england's history (including william blake, hence the quote above), jaw dropping architecture and a stupendous view of london (pity it was a cloudy day) from the golden gallery (503 stairs to reach it, no joke. there was the whispering gallery along the way - stair number 100 and something - which is a tribute to the fusion of science and art - the lower part of the cathedral's dome, it's over 20 metres across but if you whisper into one of the holes in the walls, the person standing with her ear to the hole exactly opposite will hear your whisper clearly).

then there was the phantom of the opera on tuesday at her majesty's theatre which according to the program is the oldest stage in london that's still being used for musicals and performances. i wasn't sure how i'd receive muscials, but after watching this one, i'm completely sold. i can quite safely say that i wouldn't mind at all watching it next year and the year after next - i just hope that it's run doesn't end for sometime yet.

it's one thing to listen to songs from the musical or watch clips of it on tv or from its website, it's a whole new level of experience to sit in a proper theatre and -watch- the muscial. the have the full visual effects of costumes and characters on stage, to be in the same room as the action, to have the songs reveberate off the walls and in your head. i'm still humming the songs and singing what i think i can manage of them without horrifically ruining them on my walks between places. next musical on the to-watch list: lady in white or chicago. now to find people to drag along to watch it with.

after reading the last few paragraphs, you might get the impression that i don't study. but truly, i do. in between that were math, thermodynamics and arrow pushing tutorials and a lab report on thin layer chromatography. plus some reading on quantum mechanics in the library. not to mention all the tutorials and lectures. keep busy, that's the trick.

pimlico connection (that's the one i might have mentioned to some as the tutoring scheme i signed up for) postings are out and i've landed one in hammersmith which by any stretch of the imagination is not close by. but i was given the level of schooling i noted as my preference, so for that i am immensely thankful. looks like another busy week zipping up ahead - it's almost alarming how quickly the weeks seem to pass by. for now, i'm off to a game of late night mahjong.

a midweek post

2005-10-25T18:46:00.000+01:00

and in what feels shorter than a blink, i've been here for 4 weeks! (well 2 days shy of 4 weeks, but who's counting?) it's hard, sitting in front of my laptop ensconced in my room, to imagine how 4 weeks in a new, foreign place could fly by so fast. when i try to think back to how i spent each week of the 4 here, everything seems to be a blur of sitting around in the mdh (main dining hall), trying to concentrate in chemistry lectures, lots of differentiation (another story for another time), shopping on kensington high street or oxford street-regent street-picadilly stretch, walking from one place to another, squash, cooking and sitting in front of my laptop.

what surprises me the most is how 4 weeks can go by without me really feeling anything. maybe it's the busy-ness that keeps you from realising the incredible change in surroundings the fact that home is miles away. it's only when i'm sitting in my room left with my own thoughts, or walking that i start remembering that i'm some where else, that i all these facts sink in and stun me.

i guess the 4th week is also the start of experiencing what life away from home is really like. the first few weeks tend to be something of a novelty, something that you subconciously treat as a little adventure away from home but nothing on a long term scale. it's only in the 4th week, when routines start setting in and the newness of your environment loses its novelty that realisations of how long it is before you get to see family and friends again sink in. so the long and short of it is that you start feeling homesick.

in that respect, i'm reeeeally blessed to have tons of friends over here whom i can talk to and who are walking down the same road as i am. and equally so to have family in singapore who is willing to wake up in inhumane hours to chat with me and bombard me with emails (keep em coming) full of encouragement and friends who stay up to inhumane hours whom i manage to catch online despite the time difference.

i guess the point of this post is to thank everyone for being there and putting up with my ups and downs in moods and making this huge change manageable and bite sized. thanks sooooo much guys. will make an abrupt end at this point, so as to save my keyboard from being spewed with stuff leaking out of my nose (alas, i have contracted the fresher's flu, i don't know why it has that name).

borough market

2005-10-22T21:24:00.000+01:00

the wonders of digital cameras, laptops and picasa 2:

borough market: my first photographic soc outing. the market is a charmingly disorganised mess of stalls under red or yellow plastic shades, under a railway track and is -huge-. main produce on sale was cheese (yummy!), jams, pastries, fresh fruits and vegetables, wines, cured meats and large helpings of fingered food like chicken slices drowned in apple sauce in a hotdog and the juiciest chicken patties in 3 sauces stuck in a sesame seed bun.

outings like these are absolutely fantabulous - new places to explore, new ideas to form, new people to meet and new food to try! (the president and vice president of the photo soc are singaporeans - one of the enticements they used to get people to attend the outing was 'bring money and be prepared for lots of good food'.) plus! you find out some of the most magnificient shops tucked away in little corners of london that you'd least expect. konditor & cook - they sell almond and apricot bars to slobber over. and carrot cakes with the most sinful icing. and benoffi that is beyond description.

to nullify the calories and guilt after an unbelievable lunch that stretched into tea, i ended up -walking- all the way to wilson house (45 minutes!) to play squash with yun lei and xiao en for an hour before succumbing to fatigue and taking the bus back. then embarked on the weekly ritual of laundry, only to find, after hefting everything cleaned and dried up to my room, that i was missing an undie. which led me on a long 5 floor trek back down to the laundry room to find the said clothing in the dryer. had my dad on my mobile, without that, i might possibly have decided to leave it in the dryer.

city gates tomorrow! one of the things i like less - the tube system, the picadilly line is down tomorrow and the buses will be choked. and hopefully a productive trip down oxford street. borough market photos can be found here.

sunday and monday

2005-10-17T20:36:00.000+01:00

some things you see on the walk down fulham road. the rest of my photos, if you've yet to discover the link on the sidebar, are here. random, unconnected bits of the last half of my weekend and today:

woke up -really- late on sunday (and today for that matter - 10 minutes, my new record for washing up and changing) and started the day on a lethargic note online. gathered up sufficient discipline to plough through the better part of my lab report (which i had to brutally dismember today in the interest of brevity) before heading off to the bible talks, my church for the week.

the church is on the other side of hyde park so it was a 45 minute trek during which i got to meet another chemist fresher from cu. hard to believe that we went through 2 entire weeks of school (admittedly of no more than 3 hours of proper lectures a day) without running into each other in a cohort of less than 100.

after a back-to-basics sermon, richard, another fresher, and i trekked our way back to hall and in a feat of directional capabilities and a large miracle, we weren't lost at any point in our 45 minute trek! (well, the one bit where we lost hyde park doesn't count cos we still knew where we were, in the general vicinity at least.) it's an amazing feeling of recognition finding other people, from different continents, cultures and upbringings, with whom you share common interests and viewpoints.

so that brings me to monday and 2 consecutive hours of incomprehensible quantum mechanics. which leads me to my present state of trying to summon enough concentration to tackle housecroft's take on quantum mechanics.

back to the photographs (i did warn you that this was going to be random), i think the first one is hilarious. it took me awhile to figure out how a pun on feng sushi was even possible then another minute to try to figure out what their slogan meant before giving up.

the first week of real school

2005-10-16T11:12:00.000+01:00

from kensington gardens. i've survived my first real week of school! despite a few hiccups along the way (such as crystals that refuse to recrystallise), it was a pretty good week. tutorials (minus quantum mechanics which takes on a slightly illogical level of reasoning) are doing well, cooking is going fine (we stir-fried chicken in hainanese chicken rice paste last night and it turned out edible), general cleanliness is up to par (-3- loads of laundry yesterday and countless trips up and down 4 flights of stairs to check on my laundry in the basement), cellgroup is great and i've decided to join photography society which hopefully will let me not only learn how to make full use of my camera, but also take me to some interesting spots in london.

leaning towards signing up for the pimlico connection which is a sort of voluntary tutorship scheme where students from college are posted to various primary and secondary schools around the area and commit 2-3 hours every wednesday afternoon to help out in the classroom and get the kids excited about math and science and higher education. the only thing holding me back is the suspicion that debate is also held every wednesday afternoon and though i'm not terribly eager to join debates (ponned debate this wednesday to go shopping on high street kensington for a new jacket), it feels like something's missing when i'm not debating.

on a generally esctatic note, papa, wei -and- taco are planning to come up this december and will be here for my birthday! wasn't relishing the idea of celebrating a birthday away from home, but now that they're going to be here, it makes things positively bearable! :) grace came down from notts yesterday too with a bunch of friends in tow. it's one of those ironies that i rarely bump into her in tiny singapore and over here i get to meet her for an entire evening.

we cooked today!!

2005-10-09T00:43:00.000+01:00

going by today's dinnertime experience, my cooking group comprises two people who can't quite crack eggs (one of whom enjoys chopping up raw chicken - and forgetting to remove random bits of feather and fats while doing so), one who can make really good instant bakuteh and one who can really cook. with that consideration, the mere fact that we churned out an edible meal falls just short of a minor miracle.

somethings you learn on your first foray into cooking: vegetables shrink to about a third to a quarter of their original size after they are steamed or stir fried - there is no such thing as too much vegetables, whole chicken - while much cheaper than the sum of its parts - is not necessarily the easiest thing to try cooking, sweet and sour sauce can drown out a large range of tasteless meat parts, cracking eggs -onto- the stove is rarely a good idea, having a firedrill while cooking is never a good thing, having a firedrill while cooking in a tshirt and jeans (or in wilson's case, barefoot) is a really bad idea, the switch on the rice cooker should always be pushed to 'cooking rice' if one expects the rice cooker to do its job and two hours is what it takes a bunch of four inexperienced freshers to throw together a simple meal on their first attempt.

here's a proud picture of what we cooked:

for the those without our keen sense of imagination - (going clockwise starting from the top left corner) sweet and sour chicken, instant bakuteh, stirf fried vege and carrots and egg cooked in a method that is best left undescribed.
for out-of-the-kitchen news, i got my phone -and- a squash racquet today! allow me to introduce the sony ericsson k608i! replete with a plethora of functions that i have yet to discover. and my new squash racquet! a prince force 3.

whoopee! i'm looking forward to a high tech, connected and healthy year ahead! :) (oh yes, i should mention well fed too)

first load of laundry

2005-10-07T23:57:00.000+01:00

clean clothes. ahhhh...

my first load of laundry was completed in (a surprisingly short time of) 2 hours, which seems to be a record as meiting and the people over in wilson seem to need to put their clothes through a few cycles of drying. the only hiccup along the way (with the exception of some confusion of where all the little knobs should point, and where exactly, on the machine my washing powder was meant to go, and how much powder i'd need, and how to start the machines, and differentiating dryers and washing machines) was that i needed to chuck someone else's clothes out of the dryer so that i could dry my clothes immediately after washing them. in some defense, his clothes were already dry and just sitting there and i put them back into the exact same dryer after i took my load out.

fridays seem to be a lousy day to do laundry as you have to hunt around for an available machine and dryer (and along the way pop open dryer doors to reveal the entire contents - socks and undies included - of someone's wardrobe over the last week, hopefully no longer than that). i'm told weekends are good - you can have all the machines to yourself and the luxury of allocating a separate machine for socks, undies, tops, bottoms, towels and bedsheets.

my first fire drill

2005-10-05T19:45:00.000+01:00

efficiency is not something i normally associated with the british system, especially not its administrative one - i'm still waiting for my PIN! their fire drills though, are a thing of beauty. every single inhabitant of 10 5-floor walk up apartments can be assembled in the freezing cold in less than 3 minutes. how? make the fire alarm so loud and piercing that it is torture simply choosing to remain inside the building. don't laugh, but when the siren first went off, the first thought that flitted through my head was that my laptop was seriously malfunctioning and had a sound system that was a whole lot more impressive than i had previously imagined.

that was my first fire drill today and from what those who haved lived in fisher say, a mere taste of things to come.

first day of school

2005-10-03T20:25:00.000+01:00

my first day of school was all of half an hour long. it involved walking through no less than 5 sets of doors (something which buildings in the imperial halls and campus seem to have a lot of) to a laboratory to pick up a folder with my name on it, then walk back out. and yes, it is a foreshadow of the weeks to come. from what we have deciphered from our cryptic timetable, lab is only on alternate weeks, and with the exception of days where we have math lab (??), classes end at noon. how cool is that?

took a disorganised walk through the science museum today and saw a display that was made up of over 200 different materials! 200, all in one object, can you believe that? they had a wall displaying every single one of the 200 materials being used, and i had perfectly good intentions of trying out the panoramic function of my camera when i realised that after one shot, all the materials looked the same from a distance and i couldn't line up the shots properly - so here's a segment of the wall.

ran into eunice who took us down to northend (i think that's how it's spelt) to buy household stuff at half decent prices. must have looked like some loony student after completing my shopping with a bath towel, set of hangers and washing powder dumped into a laundry basket (that slots nicely under my bed, hurray!). forgot a laundry bag and a set of plastic containers to stores snacks in so i'll be going back tomorrow.

so, as promised, photos! first up,

my bed by the window - it overlooks a park

some attempts at arty shots from the lawn in my college:

a postcard perfect shot on a boat trip down river thames:

a kinda first post

2005-10-01T23:50:00.000+01:00

it's nearly midnight, it's cold and i haven't showered (the only reason i do so is to preserve the state of my freshly made clean bed - otherwise, i'd shower in the morning). but i'm deliriously happy because my internet connection finally works!! after half an hour of hovering over the laptop and wondering how on earth a lan cable could give 'limited or no connectivity', the tried and tested method of unplugging, swishing around in air for a while, pretending to knowledgeable check the connection point, then replugging worked a miracle.

moved from my senior's apartments into fisher hall today - another long walk with luggage down gloucester road. considering the amount we've walked in london for the last few days, and the temperatures one walks in, it's pretty difficult to imagine how people put -on- weight while studying overseas. my roommate's argentinian (how cool is that??) and she's staying with her mum in a hotel tonight so i have the entire room to myself tonight - which isn't entirely a good thing.

was talking to my dad earlier on msn - or rather he talked and i typed because my headphones insist on working only on skype - and we got to whether i was settling in well. it just struck me that the last few days felt very holiday-ish - in a friend's apartment, with people you flew up with. nothing distinctly out of your comfort zone. tonight though is an entirely new challenge. on a less sombre note, my bed has been made and in my humble opinion, looks so nice that i'm reluctant to sleep in it as it'll mess it up.

dinnered at burger king tonight, the one near gloucester road station, with the singaporean girls in my hall and two boys - one from pakistan, and one from china, - who one of the girls met while she was running back up for her jacket. hopefully this is a foreshadow of the nights to come - great fun getting to know hallmates. and if i thought hwa chong was a whole new world, this is a whole new universe and it's so exciting. so cold, but also so exciting.

off to shower now, pictures from hyde park will come soon, hopefully. my fingers are particularly susceptible to the cold so prolonger typing without the noisy heater on gets tricky. i'm off to the showers, which i can now find, along with the kitchen, in the maze of corridoors that is my hall.

hurray! it closes!!

2005-09-27T18:53:00.000+01:00

thank you everyone for your prayers, thoughts, notes and presents. somehow, i didn't have the foresight of factoring in space for presents into my luggage, but after some shuffling and manuevering and sitting on the cover, my suitcases are closed.

illuminators: thank you for your prayers (both the 'rehearsal' tonight and the 'real stuff' tomorrow in advanced), jeremy and siping: thank you for the camera case; very nifty, abi: thank you for the game; i nearly forgot to pack the instruction cards!, claire: thanks for the cool magnet! that was one present which i had no trouble packing in and audrey and fish: thanks for the really really really cool photo album! love you guys, every single one of ya.

in a cruel twist to the plot, i find that the maximum weight per piece of luggage for UK is 32 kg. (i'm quite, quite sure my bag is pushing 40.) time for plan B: to shift some stuff into my camping bag and check it in. fervently praying for a sympathetic check in preferably with a slightly wonky weighing scale that underweighs everything and understanding check in officers who will somehow figure how to squeeze over 25 kiasu first years and all their luggage into the plane.

so, the 28th of september is finally here. after months of hoping, planning, worrying, ploughing through forms, it's here. i'm hours away from stepping into (or more literally, boarding) a new chapter.

if you stand firm in your faith, God will bring you through.

- yan qi

because life is not a spectator sport

2005-09-26T06:05:00.000+01:00

not being a particularly atheletic sort, this quote might sound a tad odd. in explanation, i was at queensway looking for a pair of water resistant shoes when i saw this quote on the building - it has its origins in woman of the year, a 1942 movie written by kanin. felt rather apt for the moment. it feels almost surreal now, as though i'm watching someone else prepare to go overseas (but having to do all the packing for her, i have my suspicions as to whether the suitcase will close). i suppose, being a rather last minute person, that the full force of pre-going-away emotions might strike me on the plane. or when i land. or somewhere in the middle of the school year.

so here's to show for my morning of shopping:

along with a light sweater, black top and sling school bag. not bad, even if i were to say so myself.

patting my round tummy

2005-09-23T17:08:00.000+01:00

we dwarves were built for sprinting - gimli

watching, or rewatching, lord or the rings: the two towers with my brother. never knew watching an epic at home could be so fun. it's really ironic how both of us start fastforwarding at the scenes with frodo and the ring, given that this is meant to be the main plot of the show, and go straight to the battle scenes (for my brother) and the scenes with legolas in them (for me).

luggage - check, textbooks - check, vaccinations - check, clothes - mostly check, laptop accessories - check, electrical applicances - check (my aunt got me a ricecooker that can nuke food too! i am saved from starvation!), packing - completely undone.

shopping with my grandma today. from mustafa to shop and save to my grandma's camfor wood chest. i think i've nearly got everything. except waterproof shoes, thick socks, one more pair of jeans, one light sweater and one waterproof overcoat thing (which could technically be bought there).

steamboat (complete with socks) followed by a double course of dessert - ah mah's homemade apple crumble with vanilla ice cream and fruit custard tart. this being one of my last chances to enjoy local meals, i took the liberty of drinking loads of soup and having lots of socks. my tummy is a round hard lump now. *pats it contentedly*

allow me to introduce, my very own digital camera! :)

thank you ah mah and taco for a yummilicious family dinner and thank you ah chek and everybody for my spiffy new digital camera! :)

one more week

2005-09-21T13:23:00.000+01:00

back from bintan but packing all over again. the reality of -one- more week hits kinda hard, especially when it feels like you haven't seen enough of your friends to make the memories last for 9 months -and- packing progress is right next to nothing.

bintan was relaxing, a good idea just like aunty debbie said. sprawling ulu-ated hotel, small comfy hotel room, comfortable companionship over late night hot chocolate and marks and sparks tea cakes, idyllic mornings at the poolside, muscle mushing hour of massages (an unintended alliteration), slow strolling down the beach at low tide, cold waves lapping at your feet, soft cold sand (bottled some for audrey and fish - you guys can erm, spread it around your room or something) under your toes, the faintly salted breeze in the evening, a jazz and oldies filled dinner at orzos, pinpricks of light with each falling raindrop in the swimming pool. 2 days and a bit wasn't quite enough. i wanna go back next year!

thank you!!

2005-09-18T15:34:00.000+01:00

can't remember the last time we had so much fun doing the silliest of things. cycling up and down east coast, taking touristy photos at the jetties, audrey showing off her no-handed cycling, glenn's runcling (no words can describe this motion, next time you're at east coast, ask for a demonstration), left handers outnumbering right handers four to one.

dinner at don, everyone squeezing linearly into a single photo, alex's i-woke-up-early-today (at 1 pm), tantalising glimpses of abi's gorgeous brownie (thanks soooo much abi!!) and lime cookies, -5- tubs of ben and jerries (staying true to illuminator gathering traditions, we had way more food than any combination of us put together could conceivably eat), the race-trek to jon's place (grace, you walk sooooo slooooooow), nearly ringing the wrong doorbell (second left turn, not first).

an unforgettable night of board games; imaginiff and catan till 4 am. the wheedling, loaning, arguing, hopeful 'who has ore?'s, wheat-maize-yeast evolution, not so convincing arguments for trading that degenerates through the night - all in an attempt to build an imaginary civilisation. puns that i won't forget for a while 'ore i want is ore', 'two for one, ore right?', 'it's late oready'. fish and gang, the red snapper team.

the food (it gets its own paragraph for no other reason than because i'm me and this is an illuminators gathering we're talking about). brownies with a sprinkling of coffee (which i suspect is what got us through the night), lime cookies, chips (lots of them - cheeeese ruffles!), ben and jerries (as aforementioned), frozen yoghurt (i confess to a few more than a few helpings) ...

thanks for a terrrrrrrific farewell party that simultaneously makes going off so much less yet so much more bittersweet. i'm off to iron out wrinkles and rush through my packing over the last 10 days that i'm in singapore. it's going to be a week of many lasts, but for an event like this, you just wish you could have it over and over and over again.

tummy-filling tuesday

2005-09-13T05:06:00.000+01:00

ayam sioh and a nameless spinach-and-mushroom dish - one step closer to continued healthy survival for the next 9 months (thanks for taking the time to teach me abi!). really chocolaty double chocoloate chip cookies - one step further away from healthy living in general.

cooking and baking today was enormously fun - i doubt if i've ever enjoyed it more. i got to melt chocolate bars and chocolate chips with blocks of butter for the cookies and for a brief, perfect moment, i was standing over a pot of simmering hot chocolate. can one ask for anything more?

ayam sioh was, as abi promised, very simple to make. rub a few (all right, a bit more than a few, 20) chicken wings down, chop lots of onions, throw together some tamarind and coriander, soya sauce, dark sauce, sugar and salt, and wah lah, something immensely edible and best of all, keepable. more memorable was our attempt at stir-frying leafy vegetables with mushrooms - garlic, how many cloves?, water; to add or not to add?, mushrooms; do you think they are sufficiently withered to stop frying?. a senior told me that it's amazing what you can throw together when there are hungry bodies waiting to be fed - i'm beginning to see the truth behind his statement.

a very meaningful time of sharing at small group today - i think we're finally reaching it, to speak up voluntarily. and a, erm, interesting talk with hazel on our long plod through the bowels of sunset way (all right, i exaggerate).

the first of the lasts

2005-09-12T15:44:00.000+01:00

and so it has come to pass - my last lesson with the bukit batok brothers. the nights of amusing conversations with the younger brother, 5 hour marathon sessions spanning from 4-9 in a single day, struggles through jc 2 tutorials and prelim papers all over again - they shall be fondly remembered.

my dream came true today - shopping at ikea for, you guessed it, boxes! not only are they very pretty, they are also so fun to assemble! i now own (anagrams, never noticed before) a pair of maroon cd boxes (which weren't exactly necessary, but they just seemed to go with -), a pair of classic black boxes (which i managed to stuff all my ballet apparel and footwear into), and a pair of stripey boxes (which don't have a particular use at the moment, but don't blow their cover - 'to store notes' - by telling my dad and grandma).

you could install one of those lights that turn on and off when you clap...
yeah, and when you fall out of bed reaching for the switch, that might count as a clap.
a clap of thunder, then the lights start flickering on and off (insert hand actions here)
perhaps a long stick is still the best idea...

debbie, rubin and zareen's suggestions to the apparent problem of having a light switch far removed from a bed that needs a ladder to reach. rubin's flying off -this- friday! gah! a healthy dose of reality if there ever was to be one. lunch was immensely fun and tummy-huggingly-hilarious as always. somethings like these, you just wish would never change.

a halfway healthy weekend

2005-09-11T13:01:00.000+01:00

the healthy half:
one and a half hours of squash (fish, we might make a convert of you yet!), loads of belting out chinese songs and attempts to mass dance at the mid autumn festival (maybe not healthy, but very fun and definitely tiring), being hauled out of bed at 6 am for a 6.9 km walk (all right, i admit, i skived about a km), then hieing off to west coast park for te gladwin games (HALO illuminators, hahahaha).

the less healthy half:
beef horfun, dinner at prince, gummies and m&ms for the road, old gold dark chocolate with peppermint chips (anybody know where to get the cadbury version - chocolate with liquid peppermint in each cube), lots of chips, a chococone at macs AND a humongously sinful, yummiliciously delicious and absolutely unforgettable dinner of crabs (butter, chilli with mantous and crab noodles!).

my first farewell - a foreshadow of the weeks to come. how can nine months of absence be made up for in 3 weeks of lunches and dinners?

7 mm thick!!

2005-09-10T04:00:00.000+01:00

wowwee! in full colour too! don't get me wrong, i love my mini, i truly do. but this, this is cooooool.

a whirlwind of activity

2005-09-07T17:54:00.000+01:00

an afternoon of rummy kub, an evening of squabbling over where to have dinner (actually, an afternoon -and- and evening), a final veto and overrule by taco, a night of vanilla in sprite floats (rum and raisin in rootbeer is henceforth banned, look what became of ming. but then again, it could be his natural night time state...) and television, an hour spent fine-tuning the sleeping arrangements, very successful attempts at taking a timed photo, a morning of sunny-side-up-and-bacon breakfast (topped off by another sprite float) and a morfternoon of reminiscing (hahahaha, chooop, who would've thought?). can we have another sleepover?

today has to have been my most productive yet most worrisome day in the last week. bank account, check. one item off my endless list.

a completely trivial issue, but something i want to remember. you know how jeremy has this issue with taxis coming when he needs them? i think mine works the other way. never knew it was possible to ask for an empty cab along the holland village holland road stretch with 2 other people in front only to get one in the next 3 minutes. this is at a time at night with occupied cabs zooming pass from town and and unoccupied ones in the innermost lane. little mundane things which make great yells to remind me that He is always listening whenever i call.

in Christ alone i place my trust

and find my glory in the power of the cross

back to the bummy days

2005-09-05T16:46:00.000+01:00

have i mentioned how much i enjoy bumming? every day feels like a saturday now - late nights, later mornings, waking up to days which are aimed solely at having no aim, looking around to find things i never really saw before, cleaning off a tub of ice cream with my brother (i foresee more heated discussion on my eating habits), combing through harry potter fansites (mugglenet, they should write parallel plots with the stuff they come up with), waiting for dhl to come with my letter of acceptance...

apple crumble with vanilla ice cream. mm mmmmmm. family dinners, i'm going to miss them so much. all the yabbering, teasing, yelling, whining, laughing, reminsicing, scheming (project take-them-down of farmer pictures in by gone years), reminding, talking-tos. i suppose i'll never fully realise how blessed i am to have a huge bubbly family, with cousins who i grew up with, with whom i can pick up as though we never left off, but i'm immensely thankful all the same.

it feels surreal talking to friends that you were meeting up with mere weeks ago who are now continents and timezones away - you know they're there, you know they've left, you know they're in university somewhere else, you know you're about to walk down that path soon, yet it doesn't feel like you're going soon. ask me again in a few weeks.

kicking off 4 weeks of freedom

2005-09-02T11:16:00.000+01:00

'i want to buy all the [college] apparel so it'll look like cambridge has vomitted all over me.'

- yvonne

a quotable quote if ever there was one. what better way to kick off four weeks of bumming and four weeks to immerse myself in friends and family and everything singaporean that i love than an unadulterated morning of squash with yvonne and jac. garunteed fun, laughs, talking and a yummilicious lunch plus the irreplacable smugness in knowing that you've done something even mildly healthy. and aching thighs the next day - i knew there had to be something wrong with dashing around a court after two months of inertia.

innervation of the upper arm muscles (i think). not one of the ways i envisioned myself spending a friday morning, but very cool nonetheless, largely due to company present. the first time i've ever been in a lecture with fish -and- audrey come to think of it. (sorry for pulling the disappearing act on your haribo fish, i should have warned you what yvonne has to say about my lecture snack consumption habits.) extensor digiti minimi and something-or-another profundus, two muscles i won't be fogetting for some time.

an afternoon of luggage shopping with my grandma. my legs -ache-, i have a well founded suspicion that my grandma is healthier than me, she walks 5-6 km 3 times a week. she gave a name to what i'm feeling now. henceforth, it shall be known as mixed feelings, the sorts where you're a homogenised bittersweet mixture of excitement and sadness. my grandma rocks, she's the sort whose very presence is calming and who doesn't mind talking about just about anything, and she's having us all over for dinner, apple crumble, don't miss it cousins, sunday evening.

books and the beach

2005-09-01T03:30:00.000+01:00

i'm off to bintan from the 19th to the 21st to get my last fill of the sun, sand and sea for a while. in the mean time, in between sorting out passports, entry clearance and visas, packing my room and suitcase, i'm trying to pick up good books to bring to read on the beach. anyone recommending? here's for starters...